It was a really beautiful, gentle journey. I ate the medicine (surprisingly delicious!) under Árbol la luna and meditated while it was coming on. I felt a lot of internal sensation and emotion begin to arise and began to cry. I was having mild-moderate CEVs but little open-eye visual change throughout the whole journey. It was almost entirely internal. I don’t know how long I cried for, maybe 30 min, maybe an hour? I cried for the grief of my breakup, for my heart and inner child – afraid to be fully present, retreating from the pain of the world. I cried for my uprooted ancestors, for the feeling of contempt within myself. I had an I Ching reading a week ago and ‘Approach’ came up – the book said it was associated with the ‘appropriate contempt’ that a noble has for a lower class person. So I was sitting with and crying for the feeling of this emotion while pondering how it might be appropriate. I’m sure I cried for more reasons, but these were the most salient.
Through all this, I was seeing spirals of mushrooms, caterpillars, beetles, dragons. I saw an Amanita and realized that my ancestors would have had a relationship with this mushroom – something I’d like to investigate further. I saw rainbows – which my mind associated with the protection of Archangel Michael, and I felt a presence of protection. Any time it began to get overwhelming, I could open my eyes and the world appeared normal – perhaps a little extra sparkly.
My mind was tracing a psychological and ancestral lineage of spirit and thought – I don’t know if I fully believe in DNA codes and all that, but that’s the feeling-idea that came to me as the pace quickened. It came to an identification with or even passage through Christ consciousness and something in that scared me. A fear of madness in myself. And a fear of death. I asked the medicine – is there a gentle way to learn this lesson? I looked down at the dead leaves, the worms, the fungus and decomposing earth – this is the gentle way, to see that everything dead becomes new life.
When the meditation came to a close, I hiked down to Cascada Las Nubes – I began to rhyme in Spanish and English and felt my inner child coming out to play. I was thinking about my voice and spoke the mantra Todo es Luz, Todo es Amor, Todo es Perfecto. I shocked myself with the strength and depth of my voice.
Arriving at the waterfall I began to feel… impatient somehow… like I needed to be doing something. But of course, nothing needed to be done, and in that moment I realized how destructive my impatience has been in my life. My dream of the night before, which had confused me all morning, suddenly made sense. In the dream, I had followed some snails, slugs, and worms down a path into an empty house, an empty workshop. In that moment I saw that they were showing me that slowness and patience were the path to consistent creation. In my impatience, the workshop was empty!
I began to do some Qi Gong while facing the waterfall and then began to intuitively dance, feeling the movement of energy and feeling that the expression of dance was a way of speaking truth without speaking. I stayed for a while down by the waterfall, meditating and moving and playing, until I felt it was time to return.
By the time I got back I was in the warm glow of the end of the journey which lingered until I went to sleep. I played guitar for a while, thinking again about the power of patience and slowness. I had dinner by myself, really savouring it, and then spoke with another guest while they ate. I also booked horseback riding the next day on a strange impulse and dreamt of a competition of Knights that evening.
Overall, it was very peaceful, as I had requested. I was able to process a lot of personal and ancestral grief, and had some powerful insights.