The Beginning of My Experience with the Sacred Medicine of the Ayahuasca

I had read about Ayahuasca about 15 years before ever coming into contact with it. I was so fascinated with the potential healing powers and access to the spirit realm that it was claimed to give, that I decided then and there that one day I too would experience this sacred plant teacher.
Ayahuasca is a psychotropic plant from the Amazon, which has been used for practically forever to help shamans with healing and to connect with spirit on a deeper level. It is called “medicine” because that is what it truly is, for the healing of ones soul. In Peru today, it has even begun to be used in special clinics to help treat drug and alcohol addictions. Sometime in the 70’s, Dennis and Terrance McKenna wrote a book about their findings on this plant teacher and ever since the subject has gained interest for its healing properties with spiritualists and scientists around the world. However, it is still a very foreign topic to most westerners.
Little did I know, when I first learned of it, that this ancient medicine would change my life forever and lead me down my souls true path. I did know at the time however that it would be a very powerful experience and that I was not going to go looking for it but to let it come to me when my soul was ready for it.
Then, a few years ago, my best friend began to work with the plant in ceremonies with shamans from the Amazon. Together we had read about Ayahuasca for the first time so many years before, so she was excitted to share the opportunity with me. I was finally able to make it out to San Francisco for my first ceremony in the summer of 2006. I did two nights of ceremony and the second night was perhaps the most enlightening experience of my life.
I met Mother Earth that night. I fell in love with the universe and was blessed with so much love like I had never experienced before or even knew existed. It started when at one point I felt sort of stuck, like I needed to get something out of me that was stunting my growth and so I asked for the medicine mans’ help. He came to me and began to rub Agua de Florida on my forehead over the third eye and on the area above my heart. At first there was a burning sensation so I kept asking him to put the water on me to cool me down. Eventually I felt a sort of opening up and I began to cry deeply and to release what felt like years of pent up emotion. Then I felt my third eye open up and light started pouring into me. Finally my heart just blossomed, like a lotus flower, and I felt generous amounts of love streaming into me from the heavens. It was the most beautiful feeling I can ever remember having. I knew it was a rare blessing that occurred only because I was so open to it, and that my soul had wished for that connection with spirit for a very long time.
From there I received many messages to give to loved ones, including the shaman, all of whom agreed that they were right on. My own messages from the Mother were that I too have the ablility to heal and that I would learn skills to help humanity in its spiritual evolution. My art and work with wild animals would be the catalyst for this in years to come.
After that, the shaman invited me to Colombia for ceremonies with his tribal family there and the next summer I invited him to the U.S. to do ceremony with my own friends and family. I had a number of beautiful ceremonies with him and learned a lot about myself. The universe truly blessed me with meeting him but the real blessings and teachings came from the plant medicine itself, an amazingly enlightening and healing teacher whom I have been honored to know.