I was shaking with Divine light. So much so that it felt like my cells couldn’t take one iota more… surrendered completely and literally vibrating with a stunning new knowingness.
The shaking was not unpleasant, but definitely a sensory input of maximum pressure. Strange, in that way when something is happening to your body that you’re not in control of and it’s all: OMG WTF.
Flipping back and forth from intense humility and gratitude to a complete sense of rising and empowerment. It was what I had asked for, and I received greater than I could imagine. Oh my. Just E V E R Y T H I N G and more.
Peru. Almost exactly a month ago.
Most of you know I led a retreat down to the Sacred Valley to participate in Ayahuasca plant medicine ceremonies.
It was a risk. A big risk, to open this wild and wonderful door of super woo to my tribe.
True to heart, I spent countless hours crafting an experience that I felt was unavailable elsewhere. We flew a 70-year-old maestra to the Sacred Valley that in all her years, had never before been out of the Amazon Jungle, only a short couple hours, yet a world away.
What did she think of the temperate, stunning Sacred Valley?
“It’s cold.”
We spent days prepping and my partner Carolina and I formulated the plan to: start light and build up. The idea was to give a peek into the world of Aya and then anyone could opt out if it really wasn’t their bag… or well, quite frankly: if they freaked out. (The way people can tend to do when confronted with the dark sides of their ego, plant medicine in the house or not.)
We are 17 together, sitting on the floor, huddled in blankets, on an Apu’s (sacred mountain’s) edge in our malloca. Once we have all taken the medicine, by 9pm the circular yoga-type free-standing room is pitch black. No sound, as we wait in silence, save for exotic insects we hoped would stay outside. A sweet surprise when a chorus of frogs would come around in their symphony of greeting.
And then, Night One, an hour into the waiting in the dark, the medicine started to come forth… and all I could think was:
OH F U C K.
Because you see, there is no such thing, it seems, as “starter Ayahuasca” or “Ayahuasca light.” In just a few minutes, we were thrown into as powerful a journey as I had ever experienced with Her, and my thoughts that followed in quickstep were, “these women are going to kill me.”
It took everyone by surprise, a new batch— and Aya’s own plan for us— and soon we were all moaning, wailing, retching in supreme agony or delicious delight. The participants’ experiences will remain private, but I can without a doubt say there is not a square inch of the universal spectrum that was not uncovered or confronted.
I was incredibly proud of the strength of these women— even more so, when the next day, they did not (thank goodness) want to murder me, but were all willing to go in again for our 2nd ceremony: a thought that in the deepest throes of the previous evening might have seemed ridiculously impossible.
My main intentions, of course, were to take care of the squad. To prep them, show them how to work with fear, connect all of us in a family of witnessing each other’s goals and aspirations.
And yet, because one is supposed to— I had my own intention for ceremony, and that was: tell, show, teach me all I need to know about the Divine Feminine.
It had been a decade of consciously working to let go of my controlling self and fold into the femme. In 2 1/2 years of working with women on the Mystic Masterminds, I saw a new paradigm rising, common themes of yearning and experience, and how we could do it together.
Also, how so many people were talking about leading from the feminine or #girlpower but so much just looked like lipstick on top of pantsuits. I had built a business and my current life on surrender, sitting back, and intuition and I knew it could be done, in fact, it needed to be done if we were going to shift how this world works.
It was time to share all of that, and yet, I wanted to go to the core: to the place where the Divine Feminine vortex lives on the planet and ask:
What else do I need to know before bringing this forth?
Shipibo shamans are the some of the original gangsters of Ayahuasca. The one absolutely spell-binding gift of a shipibo maestro or maestra are the icaros they sing to you individually: vocal tapestries of healing that weave between dimensions, curing and enlightening all.
The icaros guide the medicine, providing comfort or expulsion of toxic thought patterns, ancestral karma or physical healing. They traverse dimensions and generations, scoffing at time and space as we know it, revealing legit miracles.
Night Two. I knew the squad felt safe. (Night One had been only about being connected to them, keeping a watchful eye, worried about their experience and resolve.)
We all took a smaller dose of the medicine, intending for a gentler ride. Some got it. Some, not so much.
I didn’t have an individual icaros the first evening, and by the time the maestra reached me that night, several hours in, I felt the group had grown calm around me.
Her behind dragging the floor, the maestra scootched her round, 70+ year old body in front of me, and I sat up devotedly, cross legged, so close, our knees were nearly touching.
And then: magnificence.
As she sang, light started to cascade everywhere. My entire body, being, was lighting up. Pleasure poured through every surface on my skin and beyond as I moaned and giggled. The others in the room also joined in with small fits of laughter, hearing the ecstasy of my experience.
It was visceral, cosmic, Supreme, all encompassing in every possible way as I felt myself not only in this body, but in multiple dimensions at once.
The only way I can describe it is that it felt like an activation.
And then feeling this, this THIS is what it is like for woman to rise: so absolutely beautiful and completely free and surrendered yet still fierce, brave and empowered.
Giggles. More gratitude than I had ever had in my life for anything, that not only that this was happening, but that it was even possible.
What a wild and and ever-reaching Life and Universe this is. How small we are with our petty problems of mind stuffs, fear and judgement. How beautiful it will be when we all live in this place of true freedom.
So much gratitude for this lineage, hidden deep in the jungle until fairly recently and this incredible maestra for dedicating over 50 years to serving others. Oh, most marvelous.
The energy kept coming, activation and then downloads, downloads, downloads: I didn’t even know of what. Something to unlock later? A knowingness that I would never be without?
Quite extraordinarily, I had never felt anything more profound or epically gorgeous in my life. It lasted about 15 minutes, so you can only imagine my unbridled bliss.
To have an experience like that shifts your perception forever: that something so exquisite is even possible shifts an appreciation of the world to instant devotion.
Because, truly, it’s all magic. It is all a gift. And any of our problems only ever surface when we forget this simple, yet palpable truth.
Experiences like this can help us remember and recalibrate our barometer to be sensitive to this remembering. It’s fun, exciting, exotic to seek them out… although it’s not even necessary to travel so far and wide. Honestly? It’s all there within us, always.
Divine swag, all over the joint. We just need to open our eyes to see it.
