We did the last session during the day. Traditionally ayahausca is drunk in the night, in the pregnant dark, digging and dealing with unlit world of the unconsious. After the 3 main sessions, the five of us that were remaining were allowed to drink a very small dose during the day.
We walked through the jungle down to the river that runs through the Land and waded through the shady, fast-flowing waters, following the thickly overground curves.
I had to sit down as the ayahuasca state came on suddenly.
The sound of the insects and the birds, the flow of the water, the weed moving in the current, the shimmering sunlight through the curtains of vines and ferns. It suddenly seemed almost too much.
But i am familiar with that overwhelming and sat and settled. Allowed the wonder to unfold.
To be in nature, to be with plants and water was incredible. I walked so gently back up the red earth path, past plants that seemed to reach out to me, so electric was their life.
Everything shimmered with an super-real intensity. I lay down on the soft grass by the lagoon and watched – laughing and shaking with pleasure – the antics of a little white wagtail, dancing by the waterside.
Have I ever mentioned how paradisical the Land is where we drink ayahuasca? It’s like walking through Eden.
Scarlet breasted weaver birds with lemon-yellow bills and bright blue eyes darting in and out of their long sock-shaped nests, hanging like fruit from a cashew tree by the lagoon.
Swallows and yellow-tufted jays scooping across the water surface, snatching water boatmen.
The constant, gentle rustle of palm leaves stroked by the wind.
Bright butterflies, branded with flaming orange and yellow stripes loping past the hibiscus hedges.
Coming dreamily back to my bungalow I sat in utter stillness as a female humming bird perched on a branch right in front of me, panting, staring straight at me. Me and a hummingbird in direct communion. It was astonishing. I’ve never seen a hummingbird – with its exquisite long beak and tiny piercing eyes – so close or so still. We stayed for 10 minutes or so in silent rapprochment.
To sense that mystical intensity of all life with my eyes open, moving round this field of vibrancy was very intense. It really did feel like walking in divinity. And I – who have struggled for many years with an alienated sense of what ‘divinity’ might mean – saw very simply that life is divinity. That God is that quiviering vibration underneath everything, the fundamental goodness that Christ and Buddha and all mystics have spoken about.
Later as the intensity mellowed and we all sat, gobsmacked on the pontoon of the lagoon, feasting on apples and bananas and coconut water, we felt unbelievably lucky. (I remembered that in German the word for lucky and happy is the same). And even today, two days later, when the fierce dreams that always mark the end of the session have passed, I spent the day on my own on the Land walking round almost laughing at the absurd beauty of it all.
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