Rewiring The Brain With Ayahuasca — Uncovering Unconscious Trauma And Overcoming Separation
On a beautiful sunny day, I find myself in a small group of people at a secluded villa surrounded by orange and tangerine gardens. We are going to embark on a four-day ayahuasca journey.
The organizers conduct a ceremony in a vast semi-dark room with a burning fire in the center of a small circle pit and several mattresses lying around in a larger circle. Hundreds of small-scale acrylic paintings cover the walls of the room, conveying wishes, blessings, and creative expressions from past participants.
We start by gathering around the fire and announcing our goals. One by one, each participant vocalizes an intention and lights a small candle. The candle will burn for the rest of the session.
When my turn comes, I take a candle, look at it and utter a few sentences. I dedicate my session to personal healing, to the benefit of all people I know, and to the well-being of humanity.
When I speak about personal healing, I do not mean healing of any physical ailments.
What I mean, in psychiatric language, is the removal of the consequences of psychological traumas and associated stress disorders. When horrible things happen to us, they leave imprints in our emotional memory. We may not remember the actual event consciously, but the unconscious recording is still there. This recording may affect our perception of who we are, what is possible, and how our social interactions proceed. Ayahuasca ceremonies are renowned for allowing us to access the deepest recesses of our psyche and relive the scarring events.
After pronouncing our intentions, we accept the first serving of ayahuasca brew and go back to our mattresses. I sit in a cross-legged position, listening to music and observing my internal state. After some time I ask for a second serving, and later — a third.
Suddenly things deteriorate, and I find myself in Hell.
No, I have no fiery visions. I perceive the surrounding room. I incessantly repeat “Love, Love, Love”, hoping to change the negative emotional current. Part of my consciousness is still in ordinary reality, observing. Hell is inside, in my limbic brain, running amok to a crescendo of suffering.
What I feel at this moment surpasses the limitations of our language. It is despair beyond any despair, rejection beyond any rejection. No love, hope, or happiness will ever be.
The observing part of my brain lingers in a state of wonder. What’s going on here? Why am I subjected to this terrifying ordeal? I thought I was ready for everything, but I never expected such intensity.
Gradually I realize I am reliving a biographical event that I do not consciously remember. In some mysterious way, my stimulated brain located the most traumatic unconscious memory and is replaying it, while keeping a separate guard — the conscious observer — at the watch.
At some point, I lose consciousness. I do not know what happens next. Perhaps I groan or convulse. When my consciousness returns, I see one facilitator bent over me, his hand pressed against my chest. In my altered state, I feel intense heat radiating from his palm. I perceive this heat as love in its purest, unconditional form. It fills me; it permeates every cell of my body until I am healed.
After the retreat finished, I called my mother. She told me about the horrible accident that happened to me when I was about two months old. After carrying this burden for so many years, it relieved her to tell me about it. I love her with all my heart.
The rest of my session is a blissful integration. My brain stays in a super-connected mode, allowing me to identify and remove the consequences of the trauma rooted in that horrible accident. Branch by branch, I examine the enormous tree that grew out of the trauma-seed. I observe my early life tendency of avoiding people. I understand my insistent rejection of any help and my arrogant self-reliance. I realize why the world often appeared as barren, inhospitable, and devoid of meaning.
Once a tree sprouts from a seed, its growth is irreversible. Unlike an actual tree, my mental tree vanishes once I remove its seed from the past. I know it will take months to clean out the debris of entrenched habits and reaction patterns. But it does not seem like an arduous task.
As time flows, I gradually come back to ordinary reality. It is late, and some participants have already left the ceremonial hall. I go around the room and look at the acrylic paintings on the walls. I am filled with the joy of living.
The BBC recently published an article about DMT, the active ingredient in ayahuasca, being trialed as a potential cure for depression for the first time. In it, Carol Routledge, the chief scientific officer of the company running the trial, likened DMT to “shaking a snow globe” — throwing entrenched negative thought patterns up in the air, which the therapy allows to be resettled into a more functional form.
The next day is our second session. Nothing extraordinary happens, and I continue with my integration. I also work on training my brain for some new habits.
Two days later we gather again in the vast hall for our last ceremony. After drinking a few cups of ayahuasca brew, odd things happen again. Unable to sit in a cross-legged position, I fall on the mattress with my back curved and head bound to the knees. My mouth opens wide, nearly dislocating my lower jaw. Although I am conscious, my mouth opens involuntarily when I try to close it.
I realize that another unconscious recording is replaying in my brain. I decide not to resist and surrender to the process.
I feel tremendously constrained and uncomfortable. Part of me hopes that the recording will end soon enough, but the stronger part is ready to tolerate suffering as long as necessary. I want to heal from the trauma.
Time and time again, I am subjected to a series of body contractions and then a temporary respite. Contorted, with my mouth open, I wait patiently. A few convulsions, a pause. The process continues forever. Another facilitator comes to help me and I feel deep gratitude for her.
At some point, I somehow amalgamate contractions with the beat of the music. After that, the process becomes less unpleasant and more like a dance.
I do not recall when the replay of my movement through the birth canal finishes.
The next thing I remember is observing my brain again and removing superfluous debris. It is hard to explain, but now the cleansing proceeds by resetting the interaction patterns with different people from my life. I catch sight of an infinite interlinked web of all humans. I perceive love and suffering propagating through that web. I discern myself as a node in this enormous network.
I realize I cannot change myself without affecting others, and no one can ever be altered without reshaping the entire web.
I experience a limitless stream of energy on the border of ecstasy. My thoughts speed up. The cleansing of the brain progresses at an enormous speed. Everything is immediately available, and the process is effortless and automatic.
Then I find myself awakened to the eternal truth that there never was, is, or will be a separate “I”.
In one of his books, Jack Kornfield, one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West, describes his encounter with the Tibetan master Kalu Rinpoche. Trying to get as much as possible from his encounter, Jack asked Kalu, “Please, could you describe for me in a few sentences the very essence of the Buddhist teachings?” Kalu Rinpoche replied, “I could do it, but you would not believe me, and it would take you many years to understand what I mean.” Jack politely insisted, “Please, can you tell me anyway? I would like to know.” Kalu Rinpoche’s answer was succinct: “You do not really exist.”
People who experience awakening describe it in many forms. Some talk about merging with the Universe. Others perceive the interconnectedness of all phenomena. Yet others report unraveling all layers of our “dream”.
However, not everyone was vocal about the experience. Some kept “noble silence”. It is easy to comprehend why.
Accounts of awakening are lacking as they leave behind a direct authentic experience. However poetic a recounting can be, it fails miserably to project an ineffable reality into our language and knowledge base. But most essential of all, these accounts are not truly useful or beneficial.
It is much more important to realize how suffering forges and deepens the separation between the individual and the world, how the resulting alienation makes us who we are, how agonizing traumatic events shape our characters, identities, and perceptions.
It is even more important to understand what we can do about it and how we can help ourselves and others to overcome separation.
When Kalu Rinpoche came to the United States, a student took him to visit the Boston Aquarium. Kalu loved it and as they walked past the glass tanks, Kalu Rinpoche would touch the glass softly, and then he would say the mantra, “Om Mani Padme Hum”. After a while his student asked him: “Rinpoche, what are you doing?” He responded, “Oh, I tap on the glass to get the attention of the beings inside, and then I bless them so that they too might be free”.
And that is how we can go through life — by giving love to other beings and healing their alienation.
In my intention speech, I dedicated the first session to the well-being of humanity. What I had in mind was compassion practice — a method of cultivating direct healing experience within one’s mind by fostering compassion for all beings. So let me finish my story with the following quote from Jack Kornfield’s book “The Inner Art of Meditation”:
“May all beings be touched by the heart of loving-kindness. May all beings, those newly born, those in pleasure, those struggling and in sorrow, those dying, those in between, may every creature and being be touched and opened and healed by the force of loving-kindness and compassion. And may the power of our heart and our goodness and our love bring that light to the world and bring the freedom to our lives and those of all beings.”
Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Rebecca Coxon and VLP for the creative help in writing this article.
