Date: Wednesday, May 8, 2024
Medicine: Huachuma
Dose: Same dose as Monday, but felt stronger as I get more sensitive
Experience:
Spent most of the come-up paying attention to the visuals and the auditory. The day had started with Rita saying we may have to cancel a vacation planned for later in the year because she was uncertain it was a good idea. I realized that the trip was important to me and that the event we were attending was going to be healing for me and help me figure out some more things about myself. This was me actually putting myself ahead of some lesser concerns of hers (which I rarely do). Rita agreed it was important and we wouldn’t cancel.
Later, in the medicine, she came to me and said she fully accepted me for who I am. This is important to me and how I give and receive love. It was again exactly what I needed to hear at that time.
It was during this ceremony that Rita and I decided that we both needed to come back after our current two week visit and that we needed to come back together. To heal ourselves and to support each other’s healing. This is when we both confirmed to ourselves that our jobs no longer served us and we could allow ourselves to retire.
Part way through the day I was thinking about the smoke trauma from the previous ceremony and had the powerful realization that I can’t allow a trauma to have power over me. When Sergey stopped by to check on me I told him my realization and asked him to teach me about smoke. When we returned to the maloca for the closing, he performed a smoke ritual with me and bathed me in smoke. This was under my control so I had no reaction. From that point on, every time I encountered tobacco smoke I had no trauma reaction. I still don’t like it, but it has no control over me.
Sergey says that for some reason the 5th ceremony is often the breakthrough point for people. This proved true for me. As stated in my “Mushroom” section, the message I got from mushrooms was that I was “broken”. I had the sudden and startling realization that broken means something doesn’t work. I work, therefore I’m not broken. I am shaped to be what I am.
Over the next little bit I developed a metaphor for my life: A child comes to you with a coffee mug they made in pottery class. It’s a little misshapen and it leans a little, but it holds liquid so it works as a mug. It is also beautiful because it was made with love to the best of the child’s ability and you would never dream of criticizing it. This is life.
Thoughts of the day from my journal:
I am allowed to be me
I earned it
I have to rewrite my story
Everything that has happened brought me to where I am now
I am rich in so many ways
There is no poor me
I want to live