Plant Medicine, Spiritual Boundaries + Remembering

Isn’t it nice that literally no one cares what you do with your life? The only people who you’d actually like to approve of you are too preoccupied with their own lives.

I have a lot to say and a lot that I’m thinking about but I feel like it’s all so jumbled in my head. I don’t even know where to start honestly.

Most people that do Ayahuasca have some sort of specific intention or problem that they are looking to fix. Personally, I don’t even remember how I heard of it. I guess in the back of my mind there are specific things that I was hoping it could help me with. I’ve heard stories of it fixing people’s PTSD. I went on a date with someone who said he smoked cigarettes for 17 years, but stopped cold turkey after he did ayahuasca. All I know is that I was sitting at work one day, at what seemed like my rope’s end. Feeling so alone and uninspired. Just hating everything, including myself.

So I bought a plane ticket, and booked an ayahuasca retreat just so I could have something to look forward to. I didn’t do any research on ayahuasca beforehand. I didn’t read any horror stories. I wanted to go into it with no expectations. And while I don’t negate other’s instantaneous results from ayahuasca, I wasn’t naive to think that it would automatically fix any of my personal issues without work on my own end.

It’s funny though, because it kinda did the more I think about it.

As time grew closer to my trip, I started crafting expectations regardless of my lack of knowledge. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I was hoping I would be able to get closer to the true me. So often I feel conflicted by my ego. I hate it. There’s this part of me that is never good enough, and there is this part of me that wrongly feels high and mighty. It’s like this imaginary spectrum that I judge myself on, and all I want it to let that go so I can have a true sense of self emerge. One that isn’t judging me for everything I do or don’t do. I’m just so unbelievably tired of thinking about myself sometimes. It’s like my ego is this thing that wants attention, but it’s the same thing that hates when I get it. It’s so confusing.

Anyway, I don’t even know where I’m going with this because I don’t think this post is even about ayahuasca.

After the second ceremony, we all sat around in the kitchen eating soup. We were all slightly tripping still, and trying to explain to one another what had happened to us earlier that night. This one guy named Bucky, from San Diego, started talking about where we go after we die. The spirit world. It was hard for him to explain, but he talked about boundaries. About how our bodies are physical boundaries, and that one day when we pass on to the spirit world, it will be great, because we won’t have all these limitations. Yet how when that day comes, we’ll be grateful for our boundaries — the limitations we have.

It makes me think of this one part in Jordan Peterson’s book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, where he talks about his son. He talks about how much he loves him, but also how scared he is for him and how he just wishes he could shield him from ever experiencing pain. He thinks about what he could do to protect him, but realizes that “artificially fortifying Julian would have been the same as destroying him.” He goes on to say that, “I came to realize through such thoughts that what can be truly loved about a person is inseparable form their limitations.” p.341.

At one point during my second ayahuasca ceremony, I became so obsessed with the wall behind me and the floor. Touching the floor felt so stable and exploring the wall behind me with my hands was so much fun. There was so much more to it than I realized. It made me think about all these dimensions around me that I’m not aware of. All of these boundaries that I take for granted.

I remember thinking about all my boundaries and how I should start pushing them. How I should start exploring different areas of my life instead of staying handcuffed to my internal critic.

It’s like I’m trapped in a bubble that I haven’t even been trying to pop.

I felt so free in Peru. Theres something about traveling by yourself that just opens you up. You don’t have to be anything you’re not. Maybe it’s because the comparisons of daily life aren’t subconsciously interrupting. Maybe it’s that the culture in Peru is so different from here in the United States. I don’t know. All I know is that I wasn’t nervous about what anyone thought of me, I didn’t think about my skin or food. I hardly looked in the mirror. It felt like I didn’t even have a body. It’s like I was a spirit.

I don’t know. I think boundaries and the ego go hand in hand. It makes sense, doesn’t it? But I don’t need to hate it all. Especially if I consider the fact that one day when I’m long gone, I’ll miss it all. I’ll miss my limitations and problems. Maybe I’ll look back at myself as if I’m a character in a novel, and every issue I ever had will look quirky and cute — to be human.

After my ayahuasca retreat, I was making my way to Aguas Calientes, the town right outside of Machu Picchu. I was sitting in the train station, and this woman with her son and father came up and sat by me. They were looking for the WiFi password, so I passed it to them and we started chatting. I felt so clear in that moment. So intrinsically good. I hadn’t planned on really telling anyone about my ayahuasca trip, because it just felt too special. I wanted to treasure it up inside me. Yet for some reason, I mentioned it to these people who had never even heard of ayahuasca before. I explained it briefly, and we had a light conversation during which the man, Lynn, mentioned the work he did — lifting people out of poverty. He asked what I did, and I said matter-of-factly, “Social Media and marketing, but it’s not my passion.”

When we were in line to board the train, I was still talking to them all and Lynn wished me well on my trip. I can’t remember what he exactly said to me, but I had the strangest feeling that he believed in me. The last thing I said to him was, “I want to so something like you. I want to make a difference.”

Situated on the train, I went on to read my book and share sweet potato chips with strangers. As I was sitting there, the man I had been speaking to walked up and gave me his phone number and email, and asked if he could have mine. It lit me up. It felt like some sort of divine meeting. So I scribbled my info down and went back to reading.

That night, I ended up getting an email from him, and as time went on, we began talking on the phone. I’ll admit, at first it seemed a little weird. I found myself in the presence of this person, and seriously wondering to myself if people like him actually exist. I can’t explain it. He’s just such a good person. So good in fact, that I was skeptical.

Nonetheless, I ended up meeting him last weekend in Lafayette, LA, to do a business training that would enable me to go to Tanzania, Africa, and help him with his work.

The business training was only a small part of it though.

Looking back, last weekend was really special, and kinda confusing. There were definitely times where I caught myself wondering, “Why the hell am I in this random city with a random man I met in Peru?” I don’t think many would understand it to be honest. In fact, I know many wouldn’t understand it because I’ve tried to talk to people about it and have been disappointed with the responses.

Lynn and I talked about everything. At one point, we were walking around Girard Park, and watching the algae in the pond beneath us. We started talking about his wife, who has Lyme disease. She isn’t really the same as she once was, understandably. But he mentioned how when they married, they married for life and afterwards. Meaning after they were dead, they’d still be together.

So I asked him what he believed happened to us when we die. His answer surprised me, because I expected a heaven and hell type answer. He said he didn’t really believe that the afterlife was about punishment and reward. He believes that when we die, we’ll be spirits and we won’t have the pain and limitations of our body. But that one day we may be reunited with our bodies, and when that happens it’s like … the greatest thing that could ever happen to you.

I told him about what Bucky saw in his second ceremony, and we connected over that. Lynn said that it isn’t so much about dying as it is continually growing, even when our bodies are gone.

I really like that answer. It just makes sense to me. That’s an answer that feels like home. It’s like something I personally and intuitively know to be true.

I later mentioned to Lynn that I was having a hard time taking what I had learned from Peru and implementing it into my every day life. He gave me some simple advice that one of his earlier mentors had told him — to remember.

Constantly try to remember.

I don’t know. I can’t fully put everything into this that I want to. There are aspects of this blog that I’ve put off writing about for so long because I knew I wouldn’t be able to share it accurately. There’s so much more to say about my trip to Peru, but I don’t know if I ever will.

When I started my journey back to that states, I was sitting at another train station reading Jordan Peterson, and I came across perhaps my favorite paragraph of his entire book:

“If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of who you are will never be forced by necessity to come forward. This is a biological truth, as well as a conceptual truth. When you explore boldly, when you voluntarily confront the unknown, you gather information and build your renewed self out of that information. That is the conceptual element. However, researchers have recently discovered that new genes in the central nervous system turn themselves on when an organism is placed (or places itself) in a new situation. These genes code for new proteins. These proteins are the building blocks for new structures in the brain This means that a lot of you is still nascent, in the most physical senses, and will not be called forth by stasis. You have to say something, go somewhere and do things to get turned on. And if not … you remain incomplete, and life is too hard for anyone incomplete.”

I wish I could just … like, physically touch that paragraph. Just to feel how solid it is. Just to reinforce that it’s there. The truth to Peterson’s perspective brings out this sense of wonder and adventure in me. It makes me want to pop that bubble, play with my boundaries — see what I’m capable of.

I hate it too though. Because I forget. I get caught up in the wrong things. I believe the tricks my mind plays on me. I lose sight of the game, and the fact that I can have fun with it all. I forget that the universe is working in my favor, if I just take the first step. I forget to motivate myself out of love. I start to self-sabotage myself so that the next day I have nowhere to go but up. It’s tricky. At times where I should be my greatest ally, I become my biggest enemy.

On a recent episode of MindPump, they talked about how it’s easy to motivate yourself out of hate. Say you binge on too much cake one night. Doing so makes it easy to go to the gym the next day because you feel like you have to. It’s like you deserve to punish yourself, and it feels good to do so.

Anyway.

That’s all for now. Those are the things I’ve been thinking about. Those are the things I’m working on. Take what you will from it.

I know this is a blunt ending, but aren’t they always?