Day 48 – Return of the yogi.

 

Enjoyed two weeks of rest from yoga. The ayahuasca session took a lot out of me and I felt I needed some assimilation time. I also developed some duodenal stomach ulcer pain which needed rest and glutamine to heal. Ayahuasca is very acidic it seems. Only got ulcer pain late at night when in bed.

This morning began with some gentle yoga warm-ups to get me back into mode. Then some pranayama, taking it easy. Nicey nicey.

Have been reading about Zen. Will write up some good stuff soon.

Heavy new moon cleaning session yesterday, Yes folks! I actually pulled out the cooker and cleaned behind there! You do not want to know what was living in there.

Day 31 Ayahuasca synthesised senses.

Do ayahuasca and yoga mix?

No.

Though Yoga is a great way to prepare for ayahuasca learning. The cleansing of the nadi channels allows for greater visions.

Ayahuasca is to be imbibed at night, lay down in a dark room, maybe some candle light, and prepare for the awesome DMT experience. Conserve your energy leading up to a ayahuasca session. Eat only simple foods and wait about 2 hours after eating to partake. I find it best to slowly drink a medium strength brew first to ease yourself into the experience then have a strong brew ready to sip until you reach your desired limit. Ayahuasca will let you know when you are at your limit. Pray to ayahuasca reverentially for a good experience.

Ayahuasca is like a personal psychiatrist, spiritual teacher, life long friend and guide. Treat her with respect.

It is made from the ayahuasca vine ( Banisteriopsis Caapi) and the leaf of the Chacruna plant (PsychotriaViridis). The two combine to make a potent medicine. Ayahuasca is a name derived from two Quechua words: aya means spirit, ancestor, deceased person, and huasca means vine or rope, hence it is
known as vine of the dead or vine of the soul.

With eyes open there is not much effect, totally different from mushrooms or LSD. One must close ones eyes and it is the inner space that becomes alive.

Initially it felt to me as if the ayahuasca was a multitude of snakes, slivering over my entire being, sussing me out on an extremely deep level.

Should I attempt to meditate? I could see a spherical shining bulb, at my third eye, which had a multitude of sensory devices sensing me. Should I turn of thought and attempt to go through the tunnel of samadhi?

“No.”

“Just relax and experience.”

I seemed to intuit that to go through into samadhi on DMT would not be a good idea. Ayahuasca is an extremely powerful experience on its own, it does not require combining it with other sensory phenomenons, as a novelty.

Swirling fractal 3-D patterns accompanied the initial inspection. More than just visual, the visions combine feeling so your being is intertwined with the visions. Your nervous system becomes visionary. My normally flat, black, inner visional state transformed into a huge space alive with vision and feeling,

I remembered I had downloaded some icaro and decided to fumble about with the laptop to get the sacred music playing. It was worth it.

Icaro are essential.

If ayahuasca  was a bunch of snakes then Icaro was the snake charmer. Delight infused the experience. The Icaro are unbelievably beautiful when experienced with ayahuasca. Such seemingly simply melodies can easily be seen as primitive in todays electronic culture. That is a mistake. The power contained in Icaro is humblingly miraculous. I have an over flooding respect for the Shaman who have devoted their lives to the healing spirit of the sacred vine.

The spirit was very happy with the Icaro and the visions became awesome in depth and beauty. Indescribable worlds of 5- dimensional complexity, an ever changing flux of splendour. How can I best describe the ayahuasca experience to one who has never encountered? We are used to our normal 3 dimensions in this reality with time being the fourth, with ayahuasca feeling becomes the fifth dimension.

Imagine being a flower opening under the dawn suns rays; actually try to experience the feeling of being that flower. Feel joy in opening, being. Now imagine being that flower located in the center of the Amazon jungle. The sun rises and you are now the entire jungle, from horizon to horizon, opening in joy. Can you feel being the entire jungle?

Inner vision and physical sensation synthesise to create a new sense.

After a flash of what appeared to be a chakra body map,

I asked the spirit,

“Can you teach me about chakras?”

“NO. We are not Vedic.”

“What are you?”

“We are this.

Come dance with us.”

I felt elation, joy and deep bliss as the spirit pulled my essence up and out of my body into the visional world in which we danced together.

After indeterminate time the icaro stop. Do I re play them or do I sit alone with the serpent? I am starting to get sleepy, having peaked, am still heavily infused. I decide to turn off the laptop and attempt sleep.

There is blatantly no way I am going to sleep, though I am way tired. I was stupid to walk so far earlier and tire myself out. Ayahuasca starts to suggests ways in which I can improve my life, gently at first, then more in depth, soon I am stripped to the core.

Uneasy visions and feelings combine ruthlessly, presenting the effects my actions will cause if I do not change my ways. Every question is answered in pain-staking ultimate detail. I am convinced I must change. My core is empty.

I realise even the bad visions and feelings are constantly changing and they will pass. All is not bad however, I have improved considerably since my last ayahuasca session. I have some interesting options available. Ayahuasca shows me certain people whom I can help.

The yin yang of life is revealed in the microcosm of  ayahuasca experience; Indescribable highs of bliss to terrifying depths of shame in a hyper real intensity of being.

I reach for the laptop and  manage to play the icaro. I have definitely peaked and am coming down. It seemed to rise for about an hour, peak for an hour, then take about four hours to come down. The icaro relight ayahuasca’s joy and she is less harsh with me as we dance together again.

Constant drinking of water and urinating bring me back down to earth.

I started at 9 pm, went for a long walk then imbibed again at 11.30 pm, then more at 12.00 midnight. About 4:30 am I had come down but was still unable to sleep and dozed till 10:00 am, till I rise.

Day 10 – Instructional Dreaming.

I have always been intrigued by dreams.

Around the age of 21 I read Carlos Castaneda, The art of dreaming. This book had a profound impact on me. I have kept a dream diary ever since.

I favour the Jungian school of dream analysis, read Carl Jung Man and his symbols, whose chief principle is that every person who appears in your dream is actually an aspect of your own self and the dream actions and scenarios reflect how you are acting in your life at the present time.

For example, I may dream of a sexy woman flirting with me and this would reflect some element of my feminine energy and own behaviour in the day or days which lead up to the dream.

I have become quite adept at dream analysis, my own and others, after years spent waking naturally without an alarm, exploring the lucid state, recapitulating the different dreams of a night and analysing them thoroughly.

When friends intimate a dream of theirs to me I usually understand it straight away my main consideration being if the friend in question is ready to hear what their unconscious has puzzlingly communicated to them and how most compassionately to break it to them.

My usual dreaming  has  been in four stages, which reflects the four stages of REM most people experience in a healthy nights sleep. So on waking I recall four distinct dreams, sometimes they blend into each other, but usually there are four separate dream episodes.

I am usually able to fully recall all four dreams and have habitualised the process of recording them upon waking.

Ayahuascan Shamans use ayahuasca for healing purposes. A visionary state is produced but the real learning comes afterwards, through dreams. where the spirit of ayahuasca teaches the Shaman how to heal a particular illness. The healing is transmitted through a song the spirit teaches the healer in a dream. These songs are called icaro and the more icaro a shaman knows the more powerful a healer he/she is.

Last night after ten days of constant prananyama four times a day I had a different type of dream.

This was an instructional dream.

Someone or something was attempting to teach me something.

Unfortunately this morning a loud mouth chose to have a loud phone call outside my building, disturbing my dream recollection on waking.

Typical.

What I do recall concerned energy. The dream suggested as humans we unconsciously split a single incoming cosmic energy into two types of energy, we could term these male and female for simplicity’s sake. This process happens naturally and we are not aware of it. The dream suggested that there is a way of instead of splitting the energy, we take it in an unbroken stream into one of our two channels, (ida or pingala) and in so doing we can learn to directly manifest and materialise whatever we desire into our lives.

A new beginning!

 

Opened

Today, is the autumnal equinox and the perfect opportunity for me to start my 6 month yoga experiment.

This is my first attempt at blogging, so please be gentle with me, I am hoping to learn as I proceed.

My magical intention is to buckle down to a strict Kriya yoga regime for at least 6 months, whilst communicating my experiences, to you, here, now.

For reasons thus;

• I have experienced some dazzlingly amazing things through the practice of Kriya Yoga and I am desirous of furthering my understanding, knowledge and wisdom.

• Hopefully my blogging will go hand in hand with the practice and encourage me if the going starts to get tough. I am much less likely to throw in the towel if I believe I will be publicly shamed for giving up.

• I shall be anally posting my pranayama times on an accompaning page so I can chart and look back on my progress with a proud, yet humble smile 🙂 This process should also provide a mental ‘carrot’.

• I wish to share my findings with fellow seekers and hope we may both learn something  from this experiment. If what I am attempting can help a single soul than I shall be a happy bunny.

• I am desirous to firstly find, then develop, my ‘voice,’ through the process of blogging. I guess one fast way to learn how to swim is to jump right in.

SPLASSSH!

• Lastly, to make some new quality friendships on this journey and acquiant like-minded spiritual souls.

At the age of seventeen I first read Carlos Castenada‘s seminal work, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.” This wonderful book opened my mind to a new view of the universe.

I first got into yoga about 10 years ago when my then girlfriend began studying teacher training with the British wheel of yoga.

Sri Yukteswar

I read a lot of yoga books, including “The autobiography of a yogi” by Parahamsa Yogananda, which struck a chord with me and gave me hope at a time when my Dad was in hospital and I was in need of new direction. This book is simply stunning. The authors Guru is Sri Yukteswar, My personal hero.

This book led me to “The spiritual science of Kriya yoga” by Goswami Kriyananda which felt right for me and I began to practise more seriously. I spent 6 months simply following warm ups and stretches whilst also practising Tratak, a process for purifying the third eye. I continued gradual learning and worked my way through the different yoga asans, (postures) until I was starting to get the feel for them.

I progressed into the four inner limbs of yoga after assimilating yama and niyama into my understanding. Sense withdrawal, concentration, meditation and eventually Samadhi I read about and absorbed.

Learning and knowing are two very different things. One can study every possible written work but without actual experience one merely believes rather than knows.

A person born in a landlocked country may hear about the sea from others or read about it in a book, but until they actually experience an ocean for themselves, they have not yet acquired the knowledge and experience of which such an encounter engenders. I hunger for such knowledge.

I  also became interested inand influenced by Taoism and found the Tao Te Ching to be an invaluable source of ageless wisdom.

Mantak Chia’s soft QiGong exercises also resonated with me and I regularly practised the micro cosmic orbit and the five organ inner smile.

Shamanism sang its sacred song to me by way of a close friend from Peru and I have been lucky enough to experience genuine Ayahuasca rituals.

I began combining elements from Kriya Yoga, Qigong  shamanism and other influences in what felt like a natural way.

Other major influences have come from Carlos Castaneda, Robert Anton Wilson, Terence McKenna, Dr Timothy Leary, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Aldous Huxley, Grant Morrison, James Joyce, David Deida, George Orwell, Milton Erickson, Aleister Crowley, Ken Wilbur, Carl Jung, Robert Munroe and Hemi-sync, Tibetan Bon Po , Richard Bandler, John Grinder, Hayao Miyazaki, Patrick Holford, Eckhart Tolle and more, I shall add as I recall..

Swami Kriyananda

In my 30^th year I experienced my first real breakthrough and had a profound mystical encounter. This experience changed me on a deep level. It also shocked and awed me. I did not practise for about a year as I struggled to assimilate this tremendous experience. I eventually continued until in my 33^rd year I achieved another major discovery even more powerful than the first. This experience took even more assimilation time and eventually I began to work seriously on myself, clearing out old habits, addictions and negative influences.

I quit smoking after 17 years. I struggled to quit nicotine for a long time and have now successfully quit smoking completely since January 2010. I have stopped all alcohol for 6 months now. For the past 3 months I have cut sugar out of my diet.

I am now at a place where I feel I am ready, and hope you may join me, for the next attempt at a climb on the highest peak known to mankind – God consciousness.