After about two months from my last journey, I was itching to return to the jungle and I had my opportunity when a small group was scheduled for late April. Everything seemed normal our first evening; My internal attitude however, was unlike any on my past experiences. I felt -for the first time – that I could go into this journey in total trust, as now I had come to know firsthand the love and benevolence of the spirit encountered when drinking Ayahuasca, my previous fears and insidious doubts had lifted completely…

In the ceremonial altar, the shaman looked at me and started pouring; he stopped when the glass was filled midway to return some of the gooey liquid back to the bottle. I was kind of thrown off by this as in all my previous experiences he had served me a full glass. I decided to say nothing, go with the flow and drink; after all I could always ask for more later…

In all my 7 previous journeys I had experienced minimal if any purging. I was very squeamish about vomiting, alcohol allergies had kept me from getting drunk while growing up and, unlike many women, I didn’t have bulimic tendencies. Without a reference point in my earlier Aya journeys, vomiting had been a bit traumatizing, the sheer strength and violence of it was enough to make me think twice about undergoing this again…

Back in my mattress I remember finding it odd that the effects were starting so fast.  I was overjoyed when greeting the wise voice. I related back to her how touched I had been by her gestures a few months earlier (read about them here). I asked her forgiveness for having been so fearful and distrusting of her before, and having resisted and questioned, every single step along my previous journeys. I reaffirmed my commitment to work with her in a renewed trust basis and expressed that I was ready for whatever she had in store for me this night.

I could feel the effects  increasing fast and stronger than ever before and I started living this experience from two different perspectives. Only a very small part of my spirit was in my body, functioning in a way that I was able to stand and find my bucket for the intense purging I was undergoing. Most of my spirit however, was at the top of the room, looking down at my body and thinking: wow, I’m purging so much and I don’t even feel it, talk about graceful healing…. While I couldn’t feel the harshness of the purging (which looked pretty intense from above) I could feel other bodily sensations right after every purging episode. After these purging episodes and as soon as my back would hit the mattress I would be overtaken by a rush of energy, coming up my spine with a strong wave of heat and overall sense of well being. This energy made me very hot in temperature and at some point I thought I must be running a fever… The voice quickly clarified: “no fever but energy”.

The rest of the night was pretty normal and uneventful, when the sun came out and everybody started to get ready for breakfast I was still experiencing the effects full on, completely dizzy, very shaky and sleepy. Breakfast was out of the question for me, and I was helped back to my cabin to rest. The sleepiness I was feeling was very strange, it reminded me of when one is getting out of anesthesia, a somnolence almost too strong to overcome. I was happy to be back in my room, there I gave into the trance state and lost sense of time. From this moment on until I fully woke back up, about 54 hours after drinking, I have only scattered memories of a dissociative experience. On one side, I was enduring hubby’s and the shaman’s highly annoying attempts to bring me back which included: an ice cold shower, forcing me to drink lemon water (which allegedly cuts off the effects), the shaman  performing a new “limpia – cleansing ritual”, being dragged into a small water fountain for a special shamanic bath, with the Ayahuma plant. In between attempts, several accidents ensured; I remember the pain of falling twice and the pain of burning my nose in hot lentil soup as someone was trying to force feed me saying the food would “help me ground”

While the shaman had been performing a new cleanse – limpia in my room I recall catching a glimpse of worry in his expression and thinking to myself: wow, he is worried…, should I be worried? Next thing that happened I had a vision of Jan, the head shaman’s partner (his helper on translations and a medicine man in its own right). Unlike the head shaman (an indigenous guy that followed regional native traditions), Jan had experience with different sacred plants, he appeared in my vision standing in white robes with a stripe of colored red, orange and green embroidery on the left side. He reassured me I had no need to worry, saying nothing bad was happening but rather this was good for me. He said the San Pedro Cactus  spirit was very present and active in me and was helping Ayahuasca generate this experience. I remembered thanking him for everything and sinking back in my trance at peace.

Nothing had truly helped me snap out of the trance, and 24 hours later, by the time the second ceremony night had arrived, and given the earlier accidents, it was decided I would be brought to the ceremony space just so that the shaman could keep an eye on me and I wouldn’t hurt myself by falling again if I decided to get off the bed on my own. Needless to say, I would not be given any more medicine… Again, I have no memories (or only extremely vague memories) of this second night. I do have however the lively recollections from other participants: I’ve been told that I was mumbling unintelligible stuff whenever anyone addressed me, mostly to ask me if I was feeling any better, I would answer unrelated things such as “I want to get out of the matrix” or  “I won’t eat the hummingbird”. My husband was particularly annoyed and distraught by my attempts, later on ceremony night, to take my clothes off and by my reluctance to listen to his pledge “what are you doing? stop it!” as well as my resistance to his attempts trying to cover me with blankets while reminding me I was not in my room alone but in the ceremonial space.

Next thing I remember consciously  experiencing is being back on my room. I was answering to a voice that prompted: “It’s time to decide”, I was overtaken by emotion, fighting internally to make what felt like a really hard choice, I remembered mumbling to myself in my head: We had done so much, We are so close, I can’t leave now. I wish I could but I can’t… After that I heard a voice – that sounded exactly as my voice – coming out of my chest and saying: I choose earth….I was immediately fully conscious, out of the trance, and  back in my cabin in the jungle, overtaken however by a rush of emotion and memories coming all too fast to me.

I remembered traveling trough space, which looked as a jaw dropping, star filled, night sky, and arriving to a planet in what I knew to be the Sirius constellation. I remembered joy, hugs, welcoming faces and hands from people inhabiting this place. They looked almost human to me, although I noticed  subtle proportion differences (head to body relative size mainly) and a luminosity glow hard to describe. I remembered being there in this blue light gleaming planet for what seemed like days maybe even more than a week.

I have memories of striking places I visited while in Sirius, most of them where underwater buildings and stunning crystalline temples. I have also vivid recollection of emotions when seeing a large congregation of people and particularly when visiting and hugging one woman I felt I was closely related to.

Downloading all these memories at once, when I finally fully woke up, and after a more than 2 days journey, was overwhelming to say the least. I was clinging to frail memories and  feeling the pain of much of it being lost. The wise  voice came in and trying to calm me down assured: “don’t worry, recalling all of the memories would be too much for you now, don’t worry about it” I was extremely emotionally shaken and ubelivably thirsty.

It’s been several months now since this happened and I have failed to recover further memories. The only other glimpse of memory came about when someone recounted back the “I won’t eat the hummingbird” comments I had made. It triggered me to remember the exact vision I was having when I had said it. I was looking at myself and a strikingly beautiful hummingbird was coming at me, I had opened my mouth and knew the hummingbird wanted to enter my body… As he was approaching me  I remember freaking out and thinking I can’t do this, he would die, I won’t eat him!!!. I would like to add here that during the week or so after returning home, I would have several dreams with hummingbirds, two or three of them coming, now as spirits, and entering my body.

I’m not sure what to make of Jan’s words in my vision indicating San Pedro was working with Aya to provide this experience. Physically it is impossible, as it had been short of two months since I had last ingested San Pedro. I think however, there is truth to it. Many things lead me to think so including: the overall length of the experience being closer to what I experience in San Pedro. The bodily sensations (heat, shaking) that I usually get in SP but not on Ayahuasca were also there. The giggling, gibberish mumbling and overall “acting drunk like” manners that I’ve come to dread from my SP encounters were clearly present that night. Also, I know now that many believe the hummingbird to be the power animal spirit in the San Pedro cactus. I guess this experience will be filed under my growing cabinet on San Pedro mystery…

I also have now a renewed appreciation of this lifetime experience, as well as awareness of its fragility. I know in a much more conscious manner that death is over rated. I feel reassured in the knowing there is a large group of beings somewhere in the galaxy that love me from afar. While my heart longs for the day I see them again, I also have a renewed love for my family in this planet. Off the jungle camp, when I regained cell phone signal I came to find not one but 3 messages from my mom, she said on one: “I had a dream of you going away and  when I woke up I was worried something had happened to you, that you may not had woken up from your Aya journey, please call”…I texted back reassuring  her I loved her and I wasn’t going anywhere. Not anytime soon.