Meditation, Travel, and Ayahuasca
Whether in an hour of meditation, exploring a new city, or going on an ayahuasca retreat, practices of surrendering and accepting serve well. For all these experiences, the true magic comes when I release expectations and allow myself to be a witness.
Ayahuasca works best when “I” get out of the way. That typical focus of consciousness, the frontal lobe, must find a way to relax, to sink back into the easy chair of my pineal gland, taking its place in the open column of Sushumna – the central channel of infinity that envelops my spine.
The Practice of Meditation
Each day, I practice Vipassana meditation for one hour. This is a practice of catching the mind each time she wanders and gently bringing her back, back, back. Back to the sensations in my body, back to the scanning from head to feet and feet to head, back to a place of centered equanimity.
Some days I only make it through one scan in the whole sixty minutes. The mind can be scattered, running a million directions like the monkey that she is. I say she because the equipment in which my consciousness is planted is female, and embracing this has been both difficult and powerful for me. “It” feels too impersonal; that’s my preference. Learn yours and flow with it, grow it stronger and let it lead you on the delicious discovery of Self.
Occasionally. my mind feels clear. I have connection and clarity, visuals in my chakras and open channels. Enjoyable as it may be, clarity is not the point. The true practice is one of healthy detachment, of even-mindedness. A sense of trust in the process: the experience I am having currently is the experience I am meant to have. In meditation as when I drink the cup of Mother Ayahuasca, I have faith. All the lessons I need to learn can be found in this moment, in dropping into it as wholly as I possibly can and looking around with wide, spongey eyes, like a foreigner walking through a city for the first time.
Meditative Travel
When I landed in La Paz, I had no expectations. I had done little research, preferring to let the city surprise me with their unique magic. They did. Jagged peaks in the middle of colorful neighborhoods, teleférico gondola cars floating above the city, connecting disparate parts in an aerial web. Towering stone cathedrals with gold-covered insides striking reverence into my spirit. Sturdy women in traditional skirts, sweaters, and bowler hats seated next to their wares on narrow streets, chatting with one another and watching the world go by. Young travelers in trendy neutral clothes spilling out of health food restaurants, a hundred tour companies offering me the best experience at Uyuni or Death Road. I wonder who has tried Ayahuasca, smile at the thought of my upcoming retreat, and book myself a tour to Isla del Sol.
Letting the city remind me of Cusco’s city center, of the mountain bowl of Medellin, I dance with them through the course of a week. One day, I witnessed a massive market taking over the streets of El Alto, the part of the city built up in the 80s when indigenous Aymara people were flocking to already crowded La Paz. Learning the market only materializes on Thursdays and Sundays, I jumped off at the next teleférico stop to pace through kilometers of booths overflowing with car parts, fruits, baby clothing, power tools, cleaning supplies. I bought superglue from a man with a cart full of adhesives, hoping to cover the cracks in my once waterproof hiking boots. I let the aromas of boiled tongue and grilled sausages dance through my nostrils and activate my ghrelin, the pulse of life that filled the market invigorating my entire system. Who needs Target when you have this?
I lived, turning my head in a circle to catch the scent of life on my fellow humans. And so, La Paz let me discover them, led me up concrete stairways into neighborhoods named after Latin American cities and through back alleys filled with graffiti, showing me the pulse of their life. I witnessed.
As a traveler, as a meditator, and as an Ayahuasca viajero, this is the primary objective – to witness. I do not come to change or inflict some toxic colonial agenda on a perfectly capable local population when I travel. I observe. I humble myself and watch how they do life here, replete with the understanding that there is no right or wrong way to go about the daily acts of life. Except, perhaps, in the situations that inflict harm on others. Even that is not for me to judge.
Meditating My Way to Wildness
As I witnessed La Paz, so I witnessed my mind – with the attitude of an explorer. I used to think I knew her, even controlled her, but at a young age she startled me with her wildness, demanded me to see her and respect her as an independent force. This broke my sense of self at the ripe age of 20, fractured my foundation the way an earthquake cracks concrete. If I wanted to continue living, I had to accept. “I” am not my mind.
Meditation has given me practice with this acceptance, has strengthened it from an atrophied muscle to a robust organ. I accept. When I enter my field of consciousness, I enter like an explorer visiting a city for the first time, because every day she changes. Acceptance keeps me off the hamster wheel of attempted control and anxious thought. I am not in charge here, just as I am not in control when I surrender to Mother Ayahuasca. But I am curious. With every pass of consciousness from head to feet and feet to head, I witness. Even-minded. Accepting what is. Training myself to feel. Letting the sensations of my body teach me to be present.
The frontal lobe, that 10% of our brains that we apparently use, is too small a field for the great cast of consciousness. Crammed into this claustrophobic coffin, the thoughts grow panicked and violent, like a jaguar in a cage. Spread out over the field of the physical body, on the other hand, consciousness can grow and roam, can roar and hunt, pace and play – can be. Wild and free, like a jaguar in the jungle.
Wild Ayahuasca
As I arrived in La Paz without preconceived notions, so I came to Ayahuasca. I had done little research, content to let her guide me on whatever cosmic journey she found me prepared for. She did. Expanding visions over the full range of my physical consciousness, she showed me the Infinite, held me like a Mother, cleansed my system and breathed life into the animal of my body.
Ayahuasca works best when “I” get out of the way. When consciousness is spread freely over the form I have been given, She can engage freely. Wildly. Capitalizing on my meditative muscles of acceptance and embodied consciousness. Like we are Jaguars in play.
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