The prevailing advice proffered to those who are new to plant medicine or psychedelics as a healing modality is to set intentions, but release expectations. Nevertheless, that line is indeed a fine one. In my experience, it’s easy to name a desire an intention, but a certain degree of mental and spiritual maturity is required to remain sincerely unattached to outcomes. This challenge confronted me as I returned to Costa Rica for the second time this year to sit in ceremony with the same ancestral Ayahuasca carriers I met in April. It was a “do-over” of sorts; as I recounted in a prior post, my body had an alternative plan for me eight months ago. But as 2024 concludes, a retreat opportunity paired with my inner calling led me back to reflect on an enormous year of growth and to make space for feeling the profound grief that will forever cast its shadow on the Christmas holiday since losing my mother on that day three years ago. Last but certainly not least, I intended to deepen my spiritual practice to support all I am creating for this coming year and beyond.
For those familiar with numerology, 2024 marks the completion of a nine-year cycle for me. In sum, it’s the end of an era. Energetically, I’ve felt the magnitude of that as I released limiting identities and habits, dedicated myself to restoring optimal physical health, and contemplated shifts aligned to the next chapter of life that I am manifesting. How apropos, then, to bring it all to the medicine and ask her for help (another skill I am practicing). Most of my past ceremonies have been physically and emotionally challenging – some of the hardest nights of my life, in fact. Yet, there is something so restorative on the other side of the inevitable purge that occurs upon drinking Ayahuasca’s potent brew, resulting in an ineffable lightness and spaciousness. Still, I had high hopes (one might even call them expectations) for the kind of earth-shattering, transcendental apex I’ve only heard described by friends and strangers alike. Throughout two sequential night-long ceremonies conducted by masterful indigenous shamans and gallant facilitators, I felt nothing but debilitating nausea, a weakness that confined me to the limits of my small mattress on the floor, and an amplified awareness of my chattering brain responding to every raucous sound that reverberated throughout the room.
As my peers regaled each other with stories of their eventful journeys in the subsequent days, I couldn’t help but witness a familiar pattern of comparison arise in me. Why didn’t I receive the beautiful visions and mystical messages like so many others? What is wrong with me? Yet, if I’ve understood anything in this year of endings, I choose whether I am a victim or a creator, and I’m done with stories of victimhood. I’m reminded of the very beliefs that brought me to this healing medicine; I trust in the divine design, and I always receive that which supports my highest good. I may recognize it in a future moment of clarity, or it may impact me in more subtle ways, but the path to awakening is an exercise for life. Just as we don’t practice yoga to strike the perfect pose, but instead to apply its teachings off the mat, we don’t drink Ayahuasca (or work with any other spiritual or therapeutic tools, for that matter) for one peak experience. When we fall out of poses, or when our expectations are unfulfilled, it’s like a big developmental Christmas gift whose lessons are waiting to be unwrapped. And just as our retreat group danced to traditional Amazonian melodies at dawn to conclude each night of ceremony, I am dancing into 2025 with one intention: to welcome it all…even the feisty Costa Rican scorpion hiding in my shoe.*
*Ancient Egyptian mythology associated scorpions with the goddess Isis, who represented healing, fertility, and protection. The morning I was leaving Costa Rica, I stuck my foot into my shoe where a scorpion was inconspicuously hiding. After the adrenaline wore off and the relief set in that I wasn’t stung, I couldn’t help but smile at the magic of this symbolism at the close of my retreat. The medicine gave me exactly what I needed, indeed.
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