A mythic Ayahuasca ceremony about Trust (excerpt from the book “A Mythic Voyage”, lightly edited for profanity)
In another Ayahuasca ceremony, a few years later, I went to the Grandmother with an intention to find out what is trust. By then I had moved to leading ceremonies myself during the Mythic Voyages, and it was the last night of the sixth Voyage. The Mythic Voyage at that time was a weeklong Ayahuasca retreat, a cruise on the Amazon River and its tributaries on a large riverboat with about twenty participants and eight to ten Shipibo Curanderos. We would cruise all day, watching the scenery of the jungle pass by and every night we would find a nice spot, tie the boat by the riverbanks and clear up a ceremony circle in the undergrowth inside the jungle. We held all Ayahuasca ceremonies under the stars, weather permitting. When each ceremony ended, we would get back on the boat and cast off.
The boat would keep travelling while we slept (or not, depending on the intensity of the ceremony) and we would wake up in a different place, having symbolically left all the bad energies behind us and moved on. I would then spend the whole day in consultations with the participants to help them untangle their experience of the previous night and focus their intention for the night ahead.
By then, trust had become the cornerstone of my philosophy. I had learned the value of trusting myself, trusting the process, the Grandmother and the perfection of the divine and all that is. Fully knowing and understanding the value and importance of something does not necessarily make it easy to embrace, live and embody. If it were, we would all take care of our health; have no addictions, no bad relationships that keep going well after they have outlived any beauty that was there, and we would live lives that serve us. Alas, knowing what is good for us does not automatically mean that we actually do it.
With Ayahuasca, but also with every other spiritual or intellectual pursuit, finding the right questions is more important than the actual answers. A big part of my work on the Voyage was, by then, helping people phrase their question in a precise way so that they could get a meaningful answer. It is virtually impossible for a person to form on their own and ask the right question, the question that will give them a significant insight for their lives, because our subconscious does not allow a question that may touch a pain, an ache or a fear.
For example, if a person asks: “Grandmother, will I find my soul mate so that I can have the relationship that I yearn for” they will never get a significant answer. Either they will have confusing visions or they will suffer. Ayahuasca is not a fortuneteller. She is a bridge of communication between our conscious and subconscious minds, and since our subconscious minds are in constant communication with the universe and all other beings, a bridge of communication with absolutely everything. She gives access to every memory stored inside us and can give us amazing insights, but she does not determine our future and our lives. Nor does the universe, god, or anything else. We determine everything ourselves through our choices, and this is her main teaching.
In this example, there are many other important questions that need to be answered, like “What do I really want in a soul mate” and “Who should I be to attract the kind of person I want”. Our universal tendency to be victims, to be powerless, to avoid at all costs to take responsibility for our lives, to expect something outside ourselves to happen so that we can be happy is the main culprit that ensures that we are incapable, on most cases, to ask the right questions.
The issue is not finding the answers to our questions, the issue is to find the right questions to ask. It is the most focused and precise question that provides the insights, and if we had the capability to find the right questions on our own, we would automatically know the answers, because they are obvious to our heart and our soul. Since I did not always have someone around to help me focus my intention correctly and actually to overcome my natural resistance to asking the right questions, I had a method: I would form my intention with the first word that would pop into my mind and I would trust that there is something to learn there. That particular night, the word was “trust”. I was genuinely surprised, because I had been dealing and meditating about trust for a long time. I knew trust was important, I knew what it was, so why would I ask the Grandmother “what is trust”, when I was sure I already knew?
Nonetheless, I trusted the system, so “trust” it was going to be. Since I was responsible to serve and guide the participants during the ceremony, I only worked on my intention when everything was quiet, when nobody needed anything. On that particular night of ceremony, there was something new, something never done before.
During that afternoon’s consultations, I had asked Alex, one of the participants (we called them “Argonauts” from Greek mythology in symbolic tribute to the mythic aspect of the voyage) if he wanted to assist during the night. I do not know why I did that, it is a great risk to allow an untrained person to “work the circle or floor” as we called it, and I had never even considered something like that before. People are very susceptible and vulnerable under Ayahuasca, one wrong word or energy can set them off into panic or confusion. Nevertheless, I trusted that if that is what came to me, it was the right thing to do.
We usually worked the floor with Benjamin, my right hand man during all Mythic Voyages up to then, and we would usually each have a chance to spend some time lying down and experiencing the connection with the medicine when things were quiet, knowing that the other would call if needed. We had done this already many times and we knew we could rely on each other. Benjamin was very solid when doing this work, a very loving and positive guide and everybody loved him and trusted him, but sometimes (very rarely) he would have a bad night where the medicine would take him to a very dark place and he could lose it.
Minutes after the medicine hit us that night, I was lying down as I usually do in the beginning of ceremonies, and Benji came to me and said that he was scared, he was feeling his demon, and he was feeling that he was going to that place of insanity that he had not as yet managed to resolve. I got up and told him to lie down, and took over the responsibility of the ceremony. Now I had no assistant but Alex! Like every other time that I had trusted blindly and had made an intuitive decision without needing any reason for it, other than the trust that if it had come to me, it was the right thing to do, trusting that I do not need to know the why, I felt a deep connection with the Grandmother. The world was adapting to my decision and providing the reasons, miraculously obvious and logical both emotionally and mentally after the fact- pure magic!
Alex was a remarkable character; an English software sales representative that had left his job, wife and children to go to Afghanistan for a year and fight with the British forces there. He had come to the Mythic Voyage to find equilibrium before returning to his family and everyday life after a year of war and danger. He was very handsome with an infectious smile, he was lean and strong, but somehow he approached everything with power, discipline and bravado, but not with heart. Maybe the circle would be a place for him to open his heart and relieve himself of his impeccable uniform of masculine strength and discipline.
After a while, I invited Alex to get up off his mattress, showed him how to go around and check that people were well, gave him some instructions as to how to deal with people that were agitated, turned the circle over to him and lied down on my mattress. My intention was to give the appearance that he was responsible for the circle, but to secretly remain very aware of everything happening, so that I could intervene if needed.
The Mythic Voyage ceremonies were by then already different from more common Ayahuasca ceremonies in many ways. The method was developed out of the experiences of the voyages themselves; we suggested to people that they do not move their bodies during the ceremonies, to go out of the body, to allow no distractions and to be continuously focused on their intention for the night. Ayahuasca brings an overwhelming avalanche of information, both mental and emotional. Although people usually feel that they have had an enlightening experience full of insights, translating these insights and feelings into anything useful in their lives is often elusive. In addition, whenever people go to a particularly sensitive place, they distract themselves by screaming, going to the body, crying, jumping about and generally trying to go as far away from anything potentially life changing or perception changing happening inside them as possible.
The reigning philosophy at the time around Ayahuasca ceremonies was to let people express themselves freely; shout, move, dance, interact, sing, weep. We had found that to be hugely counterproductive for transformative work, and it was part of our job to softly remind people to “go inside” whenever they were agitated. Their agitation showed them their own resistance to a revelation and an understanding that they were afraid to touch, that was essential to achieving their intention. Since everything we do is meant to serve the Argonauts in their intention, to support their choice, the manner of intervention had to be delicate or insistent depending on the person’s idiosyncrasy; the intention was to guide, assist and serve, not to tell people what to do.
I lied down and closed my eyes, but I was aware of everything that was happening in the ceremony circle; I was very fanatic about my responsibility towards the Argonauts, and my senses were honed to detect anything untoward, so that I could intervene instantly. I wanted to gift Alex the feeling of the floor, the overwhelming love that bathed us during the nights, when we would see and feel wonderful people struggling bravely against their biggest fears, but more as a taste to help him open up rather than the burden of any real responsibility.
And then, I thought of my intention; “what is trust?” and as I started asking the Grandmother, I started sinking deeper and deeper into the effect of the medicine. I started resisting, so that I could keep my consciousness on the floor, but I heard the voice of the Grandmother telling me to trust, and I chose to let go of any resistance, sinking instantly deep inside. I totally abandoned reality; I consciously relinquished any responsibility for anyone and anything to Alex. I decided to trust absolutely the magic of what had happened; my decision to put Alex on the floor, Benjamin’s inability to assist on that particular night, the intention that appeared in my mind for the night; to trust everything.
An enormous feeling of peace came over me. All my being was relieved of every possible responsibility; there was nothing I needed to do, know or worry about; I was in total peace. The answer to my question was all around me, engulfing me: TRUST IS PEACE- to trust is to be in peace, to trust absolutely is to be in absolute peace. My whole body, my soul was feeling a level of peace and happiness I had never experienced before; I trusted the Grandmother, I trusted myself, I trusted Alex, I trusted the universe, I trusted the divine, my thoughts, my actions, what was happening in the world, in the ceremony. I trusted everything without a second thought. And Alex was magnificent. And the ceremony was a holy night when many people healed and connected with their truths.
A new stage began for me, and a new, exciting part of my search. I started logically analyzing these concepts, and amazing insights started appearing, both logical, intuitive and mathematical.
The Grandmother had given me one more precious gift. Trust is not just a belief, it is a choice. It is a choice independent of data, proof, probabilities or consequences. Trust doesn’t play the odds; it is just a choice, same as faith. A choice that brings peace, nirvana. And trust, peace is integral to happiness.
Happiness, which is different things to different people in so many ways, always includes the feeling, the certainty and the serenity that all is as it should be. The trust that everything is, perfectly, deliciously as it should be. The feeling is so engulfing and overwhelming that doubt is not an issue. When we are in moments of happiness we KNOW that everything is, after all, just delightfully perfect in every possible way. When we are happy, no argument will sway us, because this perfection of everything that is and everything that happens is just obvious, intuitive and true in every cell of our bodies. There is nothing to discuss. A man or woman fully in love and crazy of happiness for the reciprocation will hear no argument to the fact that the world is perfect, because, well, it has our loved one in it. And he/she loves me back! It is obvious, irrefutable and unassailable.
What happens in moments of happiness, however they come about, is that, for a short time at least, we recover our demolished trust in the wisdom and perfection of the Universe in everything that it is or that it causes. Trust that things, after all, are just as they should be is not a symptom or a consequence of happiness. It is inextricably connected with it. One cannot exist without the other.
In the same way that our emotions alter our chemistry, dumping hormones and other substances into our bloodstreams, our chemistry affects our emotions. A tiny pill, adolescence or menstruation can do amazing things to our thoughts and emotions, as do drugs and alcohol. One cannot exist without the other. It is the old sophism of who made what first: the chicken or the egg? They coexist and are absolutely dependent on each other. They breathe the same breath.
What is Trust? Helen trusts David because he always comes directly back from work, his hours are always accounted for, he is a nerd workaholic that was never popular with women and has an infinitesimal sex drive. Is that trust? It rather sounds like a belief enjoying crushingly high statistical probability to be true according to all data so far. There is neither choice nor passion behind this sensitive, conditional, fragile ‘trust’.
Where does all that “trust” go, if something changes, if “legitimate” suspicion creeps in? Trust is when Mary hears they saw John embracing a blonde and thinks instantly “oh how good, finally he got to see his cousin Jane”. Trust is when Jennifer sees Paul speaking secretively on the phone and lying about it and she thinks “how sweet, he is preparing a surprise for me!”. Trust is knowing, not believing.
Trust is to go beyond believing something. It is to consider something as obvious, irrefutable and unassailable. Trust is to choose to not allow any room for a different perception, to listen to no argument, no other possibility. Trust is to KNOW, not because of the evidence, but because we just consciously choose to. Trust is a choice as absolute as faith, something independent of circumstances, of conditions or counter indications.
Trust has nothing to do with whether something or someone is trustworthy or not, it is just a choice.
Why then do we have such trouble trusting? Trusting ourselves, trusting each other, trusting the divine, trusting the Universe? Maybe it serves us in some way; after all, we need to protect ourselves. Since childhood we are advised and tutored to mistrust, to be suspicious, to expect the worst of people in order to survive in our dog eat dog realities.
I tried to do a little accounting, like a business plan to assess the viability and potential profits and liabilities to see if trusting is a good decision. I had done many business plans before, and I was good at it; the results, regardless of the theoretical case study, were astounding way beyond the puzzling scent of darkness and rot that I was hounding; It was INSANITY.
The accounting of trust- simple math to help us figure it out:
If the theoretical couple Paula and John choose to trust one other, two possibilities exist: Maybe they are justified in their trust in which case they don’t have to suffer or worry unnecessarily. They save themselves from experiencing jealousy, insecurity, anger, pain, disappointment and they save their loved ones from being the recipients of these not so loving energies.
Let us suppose, now, that Paula and John are “wrong” to trust one another. Let us suppose one or both of them are untrustworthy, in this case either having an affair or contemplating it. Again, there are two possibilities. Let us say it is John who is untrustworthy. Perhaps he no longer wants Paula, is in love with another person, he is sick of her, whatever, and he plans to leave her as soon as he builds up the courage to do it. In this case, nothing can be done, all is lost and no amount of detective work, suspicion and accusations will change that. His untrustworthiness is “final”* for the relationship. For Paula, since she wants to be with John this is the worst possible nightmare; she is fucked!
Perhaps, however, John is going through a midlife crisis, maybe he was tempted by a transitory adventure, maybe he doesn’t feel wanted, loved and desired any more, maybe he wants to be sure that he has made the right choice in Paula. His untrustworthiness can be described as “non-final”** for the relationship, anything is possible, but he is in no way thinking of leaving his wife and family.
In this case, what would be more likely to bring him back, if she really wants him? Love and trust that would shame him and make him think full of gratitude of what a gem he has, or suspicion, mistrust, accusations, coldness and anger? Take a guess! If we allocate a 50% to each possibility, just for the sake of the argument since we are talking about random, statistically diverse people, what do we see?
The balance sheet of trust versus mistrust:
So, if you trust you face a 50% probability of doing great, a 25% probability of it being more likely to do great and a 25% possibility to be in disaster, but with a little less suffering. If you don’t trust, you face a 75% probability of being in disaster and a 25% probability where it is more likely to be in trouble just by the fact that you didn’t trust and behaved like a bitch.
Try this yourself with any issue; business, relationships, commerce, government, art. You will find out that trust always pays better than mistrust, a minimum of 75% vs. 25%. Any casino, any gambler would love to play with these odds. Why don’t we?
Are we then so demented that we choose mistrust against trust for the crushing majority of people and occasions? Trust is so rare and mistrust so common. Absolute trust seems like an almost superhuman feat, such that we stand in awe when we see a person exhibiting it. It is the stuff of fairy tales and movies. Are we so demented, so idiotic, that we choose mistrust over trust over and over again? Why would we make a choice with 75% probability of definite disaster and 25% of likely disaster, and not one with 75% probability of success and 25% probability of, at worst, similar outcome to the non-trusting option? Why would we be drawn to choices that do not serve us? Are we crazy, misguided, idiots or blind?
Apparently, yes. But is dementia the only reason why? The answer is as simple as it is obvious. We mistrust mainly because we have been taught and teach our children in turn a belief system that has created programming inside us that automatically denies us the option of trust. Because all primary and universal human beliefs point to the perception that everything we are is wrong by definition, since we and all creation are not as we should be, if we cannot trust the choices of the divine that has made this universe, how can we trust anything?
Trust is a muscle. Like all muscles it grows more powerful with exercise. But our trust muscle as human beings has been shunned, imprisoned by our common beliefs, forced to starve and atrophy. After all, according to every organized religion or philosophy, any existing world view, except maybe paganism, human beings are sinful, selfish, untrustworthy, egotistical, inherently insane. Condemned by the original Sin we have been born with and by our insane insatiable Egos. Our inherent dysfunction, recognized by all, as Eckhart Tolle explains. How can we trust anyone, let alone ourselves since our greatest philosophical leaders declare that we are somehow in the image of the divine but twisted, distorted, dirty and definitely unworthy. We need to die and go to heaven, to be reborn eternally to correct our errors and to learn, we are to be judged eternally and condemned until we somehow graduate to be moral, unselfish, enlightened, without bodies or form, without the self, angels or spirits.
If we trusted absolutely, we would be happy, we would trust that everything is exactly as it should be, and that is unthinkable, because we would not concur with everybody else’s belief system. We would then inevitably act in ways that would make us be singled out, accused, condemned, disapproved of and we would have to face our biggest fear: Of being alone. Of being unwanted, unapproved, unaccepted. Cruelly ostracized. Alone.
Alone. Humanity’s hell on Earth. But why do we fear this so much, why is this stick so effective and horrendous that we would be willing to forgo the carrot of happiness? What makes it so horrible? Furthermore, why have we created these universally accepted beliefs that we, the way we are and all creation are wrong and need fixing, disguising or hiding? The answer lies in two intertwined concepts: The concept of belief and the concept of truth. Another chicken and egg situation.
The prerequisite for peace, for happiness is trust. Can we get ourselves out of this vicious circle and actually be naturally inclined to trust instead of mistrust and to happiness instead of misery and anxiety?
Why the fuck not? If we wish to be happy, we must be powerful so that we are not afraid. To have infinite power, so that we are afraid of nothing, it must be obvious that we must have the power to be happy. We are able to do anything we want by definition. The moment, through months or years of practice that one has managed to install the appropriate belief system, the belief system of happiness, choice, love and power, the universe magically adjusts and confirms it.
The filtering lens that dictates that by definition everything is exactly as it should be, allows a whole magical world of clarity and perfection to emerge, and when properly and permanently implanted on the retina of our being, vibrates with divinity; this magical world is not only one where we permanently live, but at the same time is the most perfect beautiful reality we can dare to imagine.
