Ayahuasca Trip Report: Facing My Inner Demon

[Rob06]

The events you are about to read took place a while ago, back in May 2016. Currently I am getting interested in experimenting with psychedelics again, so I reread the trip reports of my two past experiences with psyhedelics, both with ayahuasca. Wanted to share my trip reports with you guys and girls as well, so here it is.

A short introduction

I did both of these trips during a weekend retreat at a Dutch organization called The Sacred Voyage. It was all in kind of a therapeutic setting, using concepts like "getting back in touch with your inner child," and "facing your shadow," and your "inner critic". The Saturday consisted of group sharing, a dancing and moving workshop, and holothropic breathwork.  The Sunday was completely dedicated to ayahuasca. The guides were all very experienced in working with plant medicine and things like shadow- and consciousness work. The setting was professional yet personal, which made me feel very comfortable to go into the experience. We were with about 15 people, all sitting on our own mattress with blankets and cushions. There were about 4 guides. Luckily there was no dancing or weird ceremonies during the ayahuasca itself, and everyone was encouraged to go into their own process. The guides were there to help out if needed. I fasted about 5 days beforehand on recommendation of the organization. I left out my addictions like coffee and sugar, and ate only smoothies and vegetable soup. This is probably the reason why I didn't have to puke or shit myself. I went into the whole experience with excitement and a bit of fear, and with a headache from lack of caffeine and a poor night of sleep. 

Back in 2016 (I was 24 then) I was dealing with social anxiety and low self esteem issues. I was also dealing with overuse issues and pain in my arms and shoulders, due to playing bass guitar. I studied jazz at conservatory, and was very perfectionistic. My self esteem was tied in with how good of a musician I was, and I didn't think I was that good. I wanted to see if the ayauasca ceremony in the setting of the Sacred Voyage could help me get over these problems, and maybe even heal my body.

One more thing I need to say for you to understand the trip report better is that I took a couple of pictures with me, pictures of me and my brother as kids, pictures of my parents (and also grandparents if I remember correctly), and pictures of myself as a baby, lying under an incubator. As a baby I didn't have enough oxygen to make it on myself. I was looking at these pictures a couple of times during the trip.

So without further ado, here is trip report number one from back in 2016. This is how I wrote it up back than.

The report

"Yesterday I made my first Sacred Voyage. It was a very special, confronting experience. The biggest theme that emerged in the journey was my inner critic, manifesting as a demon of immense power. The journey started after taking the first glass of Ayahuasca with a chakra meditation that lasted about an hour, which was led by the leading guide of the ceremony. At the end of this meditation I started to see all kinds of patterns and became dizzy. The stuff started to work. At some point (I weren't able to track time anymore) I started looking at my arms. They started to turn and spin slowly before me and deformed. At times they looked like baby hands, but I also thought of the hands of one of my aunts, who is mentally and physsically impaired. I looked very closely at my arms, the veins were very clearly visible. I also tried to give them healing by giving them some massage and love. At times my hands seemed very alien-like!

What I remember afterwards is that I smelled a very burning scent. I know it was incense, because one of the guides passed by with it again when I was almost out of my journey. But during the journey it smelled of an intensely large fire. I entered a kind of lava underworld with a lot of desert (different but similar to the lava level in Super Mario 64, combined with the desert level) . My breathing became very heavy and it felt like I was exhaling some kind of thick smoke. It felt like I was a demon/wizard from the Middle East.

Later I realized that this heavy breathing might have come from being under an incubator as a baby, reliving what that felt like. In any case, it felt very familiar to me. I felt like I came out of fire. This fire demon wanted the best for the baby (me as a baby). I took the photo and gave the baby fire and love. In the photo of myself I saw a lot of my mother. I also felt my mother's love for me when I was a baby. It was a very strong love, but also came out of a lot of fear of losing the little one.

It is very difficult to put this whole experience into words. So much happened. I've heard, seen and felt so much. There were also very powerful insights and life lessons, of which I will probably get some of them back in the coming time.

The whole journey was kind of a struggle between this fire and love. Fire in the form of power and strenth and love in the form of Universal Love. The demon, my critic, loses itself very quickly in its own power. He doesn't want to give up his kingdom. This power destroys himself. He forgets that he comes from a place of love and good intention for the baby, and he's too scared to let go, too scared the baby will get hurt.

There were also many beautiful moments during the journey, moments when I could almost let myself go in love, or in the good. There were also a lot of insights. And love for myself, for my parents, for my brother, for my friends. Yet again and again this goodness has been overshadowed by the demon that cannot let go. I was in a lot of physical pain. Especially in my bones, joints and in my solar plexus. The pain in my bones and joints was mainly due to the mattress on which I lie and slept the last night I think, and because I slept very badly the night before the trip. Because of this, my body had hardly been able to relax. Maybe it has something to do with my sleeping position. In any case, the pains in my body intensified considerably during the journey. This pain was also a feature of the demon during the experience, who was old and weighed down by his own power, which  made him suffer.

Words that came up in addition to fire and love were curiosity, adventure and humor. Qualities that I ascribed to myself, but which I think are also entrenched by the demon.

Letting go was also an important aspect. At one point, I convinced the demon of finally letting go of itself. I put on my eye caps and inserted my earplugs and lay down quietly. I literally wanted to die. The demon understood this too. Only it didn't work. The demon started making excuses all the time, things that had to be done before. Viewing photos, healing my arm, etc. Each time I tried to convince the demon that it will continue after death, but then with the demon by my side, and not the demon ruling over me. I told him that adventure awaits on the other side. But he didn't want to give up. This resulted in a lot of stress and pain.

In retrospect, I think I wanted to let go of the demon because it caused me too much pain. I also wanted to discover what was behind that pain, to the light, to heaven or something. I think this was an ego decision and it doesn't work very well in that dimension I think. I was also worried that I didn't have enough time. Not enough time in the sacred dimension to let go and experience the nice stuff. The battle actually went on all the time. It got really frustrating at some point."

Final Thoughts

That was all I wrote back in 2016, about my first ayahuasca experience. The whole thing lasted about 8 hours and I drank 3 glasses of ayahuasca. The last two tasted even nastier than the first one.

In hindsight I remember that I had this naive notion of letting go of the ego and surrendering to Oneness which I read about before, and maybe heard about through Actualized. I thought that I would just be able to let go and be all happy afterwards. It didn't turn out that way... I can also see how the demon I experienced during the experience is a beautiful metaphor for the ego, or at least for the denser, darker, traumatized parts of the ego.

Leaving the retreat that day I didn't feel all lovey dovey, excited and spiritual, like I imagined it would've been. I felt kind of confused and disappointed by the whole experience at first, but started to really appreciate it in the following weeks. I'm still not really sure what I got out of the experience. It didn't heal my body, and didn't fix my low self-esteem issues. I only got a grip on those a couple of years back, and not through the use of psychedelics. I do view this experience as an essential start of my spiritual/self-actualization journey though. It certainly made me hungry for more, and I saw the potential of the psychedelic realm, so to speak. 

Today I also see that I probably got too deeply emersed in the content of the experience, rather than trying to go meta and contemplate and observe the whole thing happening. But on the other hand, that was where I was at, at the time. 

Edited October 13, 2021 by Rob06

[Loving Radiance]

Thanks for the share!