A Native American Shaman, who smoked rolled cigarettes like a chimney and whose personality was just as brusk and gruff as his character traits, was our Ayahuasquero for the night. Like him, his magical blend of medicine was potent and harsh. All I needed that evening was the first - a single - dose (which looks like a shot of dark sludge smoothie in a cup).
I recall drinking it and feeling a wave of nausea rise up in my belly. I cajoled myself to drop deeply into my breath as I slumped with my head on my chest against a wall. Slow inhalations slowly shot me out of the Earth's atmosphere and far into the Cosmos. My stoic facade - walls built from a lifetime's fear of beeing judged - broke open and, for hours, copious tears rolled down my face as snot dripped from my nose.
At first, I did not have any emotional attachment to this deep purging - it was simply a cleansing of my BodyMind of a few decades worth of stored grief and trauma. Simultaneously, fantastic visions of myself in space craft passing over the Earth as well as dug down deep within the Earth's cavernous womb passed before my eyes. And, I knew then that "It all just is..." Eventually, however, I gave way to the sobs that wanted to come forth. I crawled (not beecause I couldn't walk, but beecuase I was beeing gentle and considerate of my peers around me who were engaged within their own quiet, internal healing) over to a peer who was also participated in that night's ceremony. A soft woman who unconditionally loved a shared brother of ours back into his powerful sexuality, I sat beefore her and grieved. Back then, I knew not why.
This experience was so profoundly healing that, in the months that followed, I found myself unusually committed to a daily practice of early morning meditation. I reveled in a heightened state of well beeing and awareness and I felt no desire or need for another such experience. And, later that year, a partner and I opened our first community center and healing space located in downtown San Diego. It was this experience that awoke me to my connection to the HONEY BEE, while hastening me further along on my path as a Medicine Woman.
In the Prosperity Hive, we had an Ayahuasquero from South America, and his bi-lingual, American wife, offer their gentle medicine on a summer night. In the summer of 2011, I was chomping at the bit for Grandma's Medicine - I "needed" her to help me find discipline. Sitting in the pitch black of the Hive at the top of the Art Building, I waited, and waited and waited for a "trip" to arrive. My mind, like a nest of busy bees buzzing on and on and on, hankering for a reprieve and, yet, all that came was a voice from deep down inside of me. "What you are seeking is inside of you," it said. "Humph," my ego whined, even as my inner wise woman always knows TRUTH when she experiences it.
Last year, I invited this same loving healer and his wife back to my then home, a collective house in a vibrant neighborhood of downtown, to once more offer his soothing relief. Prior to their visit, I bathed myself in intention for the evening's ceremony. I was calling in a transformation in my life - tired of beeing ill at ease where money and my profession are concerned, I sat with my desire for a SHIFT. Exhausted from a night beefore spent dancing a loved One's birthday in while he shared his groovy tunes at a Pacific Beach bar, I once more found myself anxiously waiting for the first round of Grandma's Medicine to pass while I sat expectantly, experiencing not a "magical carpet ride" but, rather, annoyance about the loud music pouring out of the church across the street and the sounds of my roommate's shoes clomping across the upstairs wooden floors.
However, when I shot that second round of sludge down my throat, I knew that Grandma had heard my prayers. Drifting off between consciousness and a semi-sleeping state, I was awakened by the sound of what can only bee described as the power going out to the house. I awoke with a start, coming back into an upright, seated position, feeling jolted and as though I had to take care of "the issue." It took a few moments for me to realize that we didn't need the electricity on, for we were sitting in the dark with candles lit and real instruments accompanying the soulful voice of our Ayahusaquero as he sang his haunting Icaros. And then it dawned on me, what I heard and felt, wasn't outside of me ~ it was within. My internal poles had shifted.
For the remainder of that round, I swayed and I cried and I held myself as I was visited by numerous visions. The most telling was an image of me wrapping a blue ribbon around and around the planet as well as through time, as I bound the Medieval era and its noxious normalization of violence as 'entertainment' into a firm bundle. I then drew it to my chest, and held and rocked it like a Mama to her crying baby. This is when I felt the hands of Quan Yin, the Bodhisattva of Divine Compassion, guiding us forward - encouraging me to understand that what this now calls for as a sustainable and just way forward is this deep space of Feminine LOVE and FORGIVENESS. It's our only HOPE and path.
