Ayahuasca Quotes

One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you can't learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimisn you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca drink, or Mescaline take, or Peyote goop up with -

In truth, ayahuasca is the television of the forest.

I was afraid that after drinking Ayahuasca and experiencing death that I would get reckless and careless, but the exact opposite happens it appears that death is what gives life its meaning.

Lao Tzu once said, 'Nature doesn’t hurry, yet everything is accomplished.' A single seed planted, eventually becomes a garden in time – when things get tough, tend to the garden in your mind.

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson’s last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel—how shall I put this?—mentally sound.

One fast more or I'm gone', I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness which is a physical and spiritual and metaphysical hopelessness you can't learn in school no matter how many books on existentialism or pessimism you read, or how many jugs of vision-producing Ayahuasca you drink, or Mescaline you take, or Peyote goop up with-- That feeling when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the fear of eerie death dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the hot countries, the feeling of being a bent back mudman monster groaning underground in hot steaming mud pulling a long hot burden nowhere, the feeling of standing ankledeep in hot boiled pork blood, ugh, of being up to your waist in a giant pan of greasy brown dishwater not a trace of suds left in it--The face of yourself you see in the mirror with its expression of unbearable anguish so hagged and awful with sorrow you can't even cry for a thing so ugly, so lost, no connection whatever with early perfection and therefore nothing to connect with tears or anything: it's like William Seward Burroughs' 'Stranger' suddenly appearing in your place in the mirror- Enough! 'One fast move or I'm gone' so I jump up, do my headstand first to pump blood back into the hairy brain, take a shower in the hall, new T-shirt and socks and underwear, pack vigorously, hoist the rucksack and run out throwing the key on the desk and hit the cold street...I've got to escape or die...

When you drink ayahuasca, and you get to see divinity, you can almost never speak of it because it’s too big for words.

Shamanism resembles an academic discipline (such as anthropology or molecular biology); with its practitioners, fundamental researchers, specialists, and schools of thought it is a way of apprehending the world that evolves constantly. One thing is certain: Both indigenous and mestizo shamans consider people like the Shipibo-Conibo, the Tukano, the Kamsá, and the Huitoto as the equivalents to universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and the Sorbonne; they are the highest reference in matters of knowledge. In this sense, ayahuasca-based shamanism is an essentially indigenous phenomenon. It belongs to the indigenous people of Western Amizonia, who hold the keys to a way of knowing that they have practiced without interruption for at least five thousand years. In comparison, the universities of the Western world are less than nine hundred years old.

Every time I gaze at stars above, I feel small, big, infinite and connected all at the same time, and tonight on the Amazon is no different.

A man who owns two shots of ayahuasca owns all of the knowledge that there has ever been.

When we do plant medicine, and we see love, we realize right then and there that it was never apart from us, that in fact it was a part of us.

All disease, disorder and addictions stem from the yearning to reunite with one’s soul.

The key to all of your behaviors is hidden in a box that you can’t open using normal tools, your subconscious needs a different recipe than the one you’ve been using.

Hmm. I think love is about loving all things, to treat each and every thing and every one as a sovereign being that’s free to make its own choices.

You already know everything, ayahuasca simply makes you aware of it!

The scariest part of ayahuasca, the thing that scares us the most, is that we might see ourselves.

First time I died on Ayahuasca I was scared to death. And then, I realized that I was no longer afraid to die. It’s quite a gift.

I sit up and stare with eyes closed, perceiving the infinity of this dimension, so grateful to experience this, comfortable with the idea of this journey either ending shortly or continuing forever.

When you reunite with your soul, everything that you think changes and all of the pain goes away.

Homeopathy is the true and very advanced healing science much beyond the scope of current methods of chemical analysis and interpretation.

The shortcut to happiness is truth.

Stop shining a light on the things you're not.

I feel part of the environment, not separate from it, as though I’m at home rather than visiting—as though I’m tapped into some eternal omnipresence beyond the transient physical forms.

Perspective shifted on why it must 'hurt to heal', and a series of questions kept coming to mind. I found myself wondering if these medicines always 'hurt', or do they hurt so much now to show us how separate we are from nature? Perhaps these 'revelations in pain' are necessary in order for a personal apocalpyse to occur so you may have a shift in perception, and a greater understanding of your role in the whole? To realize that we are not foreign from nature, nature is where we come from and where we return to.

Leave yourself alone, trying to fix your subconscious with programs and acts of will is tantamount to trying to start a car with a bird feather. You have the wrong tool, so please leave yourself alone.

You are infinitely capable. You don't live in the universe. You are the universe. You are the entire universe experiencing itself through the eyes of one human. And thus, you are free to create the reality you choose.

You will make sense of all your past lovers, once you make love to your soul.

No heart, no peace. Know heart, know peace.

It's impossible to fill the loss of one's soul with anything, other than yourself.

La mujeres son como la ayahuasca.

You already know everything, all ayahuasca does is remind you, it makes you aware of the infinite you have already known.

I hope to inspire you to recognize that your reason for existence is to pursue the things that excite you the most. The best thing you can do--for yourself and everyone else--is to act on the things you're most passionate about. When you do, you'll shine, and everyone else will see that brilliance. On a biological level, the mirror neutrons of the people around you will activate. They will recognize that they can also follow their dreams and accomplish things they have always wanted to accomplish. On a spiritual level, their souls will remember their reason for being.

A man lives in a little house. A stranger asks him how to find the road for Ayahuasca. "Ah, this way, señor." He is leading the man around and around: "The road is right here." Suddenly he realizes he hasn't any idea where the road is, and why should he be bothered? So he picks up a rock and kills his tormentor.

This is the risk of psychedelics, and of spiritual experiences in general. Your critical fire-wall comes down, the contents of your subconscious and imagination flood in, and one cannot always discriminate between what is wise and what is nonsense, what is soul and what is ego, what is metaphor and what is literal truth.

...what science cannot explain is the psychic effect of this 'mother of all plants,' the sense of the numinous and the spiritual world it reportedly opens up. Those who drink say that each ayahuasca journey is unique. They say that the spirit of the vine comes alive, it guides and teaches, and on the other side nothing is ever the same. Or so they say.

Nothing lasts, but nothing is lost. Seek the lesson, and you will find yourself.

Your soul will get you through tough times with no money, better than your money will get you through times with no soul.

Happiness, is one meeting away, and it’s a meeting with yourself.

Your Life Purpose is your North star in the dark night as you navigate your canoe. It is the compass by which your soul directs your life journey.

Ram Dass wrote: ‘When you give up your specialness you are part of all things.’ Get over the trap of specialness. Try to practice acceptance and equanimity

could literally reset the boundaries of who you are and what you’re capable of.

When San Pedro begins to affect your consciousness, it first feels as though a subtle wave of change occurs, and can best be described as a vibration of sunlight penetrating your energetic field. The medicine’s spiritual correspondence relates to masculine energies, the energy of the sun, and (in my personal experience) serves as a vehicle for remembering light through a presence of warmth.

In addition to localized neural networks, hallucinogenic drugs have been documented to trigger such preternatural experiences, such as the sense of floating and flying stimulated by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids. These can be found in mandrake and jimsonweed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans, probably for this very purpose.32 Dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines are also known to induce out-of-body experiences. Ingestion of methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) may bring back long-forgotten memories and produce the feeling of age regression, while dimethyltryptamine (DMT)—also known as “the spirit molecule”—causes the dissociation of the mind from the body and is the hallucinogenic substance in ayahuasca, a drug taken by South American shamans. People who have taken DMT report “I no longer have a body,” and “I am falling,” “flying,” or “lifting up.

If you make a choice to walk into the darkness, eventually you may come to know that love is the invisible glue that binds, and light is the container everything is held in. Darkness is a temporary illusion, but the light is ever present.

Most people only care about one state of consciousness – the ordinary waking state – and they seek to accumulate material things. We have lost connection with any subtler levels of reality, the many dimensions and dream worlds that ayahuasca reveals. Amazonian cultures like the Achuar and the Secoya often believe that communing with these other levels or dimensions is an essential part of what we are here to do as humans. In losing touch with the dream world and the imaginal dimensions, modern humanity lost its soul and its purpose.

The origin of human consciousness as well as the mystical experience may have been linked to humanity’s use of visionary plants. In the Rig Veda, one of the earliest collections of Vedic Sanskrit hymns from India, there is frequent mention of a plant called soma, which, when drunk, produced marvellous seemingly entheogenic effects.

But I wasn’t like Archer Sylvan in other ways; I was never given the opportunity to try. Archer would sleep on tour buses with bands or camp in the desert with an actor or do ayahuasca with a politician and come to the realization that he had to divorce his wife and marry his research assistant, whom he now realized he knew twelve lives ago. He got lost for days waiting for a reclusive rock star. He spent $7,000 on stripper tips once, submitted the expense without a receipt (naturally), and was reimbursed even though no stripper ended up in the story. Once, I had to check a second bag on a flight from Europe where I was interviewing an actor and I got a pissed-off call from our managing editor and I never did it again.

That Boston show was when I began to see your mother through the eyes of her fans and realized her stage presence was more than the sum of its jokes. She was speaking to people's truths and making them laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. This was what our ayahuasca ceremonies were about: sourcing the most potent parts of ourselves and letting go of the rest. Your mother, I saw, had done just that. She was embodying experiences lie pregnancy and childbirth that are sacred to us as individuals, and celebrating these acts in a fresh new light. Asian cultures often teach us to be silent about our sexuality and filled with shame. Your mother breaks that up and transmutes pain and shame into power, like a mystical priestess.

Always seeking to open channels to new dimensions of consciousness and reach new heights of enlightenment, he spent a lot of time and money endearing himself to and worming his way into the trust of secretive tribal healers and shamans. Under their guidance, he experimented with all kinds of psychoactive substances and entheogens—mostly plant-derived concoctions that played a pivotal role in the religious practices of the tribal cultures he was exploring. He started with more easily accessible, local mind-altering substances like psilocybin mushrooms and Salvia divinorum, under the guidance of Mazatec shamans in the isolated cloud forests of the Sierra Mazateca, then he moved on to more obscure, and more intense, hallucinogens like ayahuasca, the vine of the soul; iboga, the sacred visionary root; borrachero; and others that few outsiders had ever been offered. He

When the soul opens its shell, it liberates the fundamental center that is the spirit. And once born, the spirit spreads its wings and flies with all the freedom of love, going to nestle in the heart where resides true Divine love. Love is God in full flight, and it is found inside our own selves. It is the bird coming back to its nest, the spirit returning to its reality, and the creature to the Creator, all coming together in the domain of the One who is and always was.

The traumatic aspect of drinking ayahuasca is that in order to heal yourself, you must first confront the wound; by forcing you to deal with your own inner garbage, ayahuasca shows you things about yourself that you might not want to see. I wish that a whole country could drink ayahuasca—not merely every individual citizen of a country, but the country itself, the spirit of the country. I wish that a flag could drink ayahuasca, that we could just fold the Stars and Stripes into the shape of a cup, pour in the tea, and transport Uncle Sam into another dimension. He’d have to fight his way out of some nightmares, but he’d be cleansed. What would he find? William S. Burroughs wrote that when you drink ayahuasca, “The blood and substance of many races, Negro, Polynesian, Mountain Mongol, Desert Nomad, Polyglot Near East, Indian—new races as yet unconceived and unborn, combinations not yet realized—pass through your body.” When Burroughs drank, he actually saw himself transformed into both a black man and a black woman. What if some freedom-hating narcoterrorists snuck into the Fox News studios and put ayahuasca in Sean Hannity’s coffee, just before he went live? What would be the day’s fair and balanced news for America? If America drank ayahuasca and then withdrew into the filthy pit of its own heart, confronting all its fears and hate and finally purging itself of that negative energy, maybe America would come out Muslim: sucked through a black hole by the Black Mind, young Latter-Day Saint crackers with smooth cheeks, short-sleeved white shirts, and name tags confront nightmarish visions of getting swallowed whole by giant grotesque “Jolly Nigger” coin banks and then find themselves vomited back up as Nubian Islamic Hebrews in turbans and robes selling incense on the subways. The “God Hates Fags” pastor, eyes wild with a new passion for Allah, boards a helicopter to drop thousands of Qur’ans upon the small towns below. I want to see ayahuasca’s vine goddess clean out America’s poison. But what would happen if a religion could drink the vine? What if I poured ayahuasca into my Qur’an?

I have a good friend, let’s call him Slim Berriss, who’s devised a schedule for himself that combines practical microdosing and pre-planned 1- to 2-day treks into deeper territory. For him, this blend provides a structured approach for increasing everyday well-being, developing empathy, and intensively exploring the “other.” Here is what it looks like: Microdosing of ibogaine hydrochloride twice weekly, on Mondays and Fridays. The dosage is 4 mg, or roughly 1/200 or less of the full ceremonial dosage at Slim’s bodyweight of 80 kg. He dislikes LSD and finds psilocybin in mushrooms hard to dose accurately. Woe unto he who “microdoses” and gets hit like a freight train while checking in luggage at an airport (poor Slim). The encapsulated ibogaine was gifted to him to solve this problem. Moderate dosing of psilocybin (2.2 to 3.5 g), as ground mushrooms in chocolate, once every 6 to 8 weeks. His highly individual experience falls somewhere in the 150 to 200 mcg description of LSD by Jim later in this piece. Slim is supervised by an experienced sitter. Higher-dose ayahuasca once every 3 to 6 months for 2 consecutive nights. The effects could be compared (though very different experiences) to 500+ mcg of LSD. Slim is supervised by 1 to 2 experienced sitters in a close-knit group of 4 to 6 people maximum. NOTE: In the 4 weeks prior to these sessions, he does not consume any ibogaine or psilocybin.

When Dennis McKenna drank ayahuasca , he had a vision in which he became “a sentient water molecule, percolating randomly through the soil, lost amid the tangle of the enormous root fibers of the Banisteriopsis World Tree.” I could feel the coolness, the dank dampness of the soil surrounding me. I felt suspended in an enormous underground cistern, a single drop among billions of drops … as if squeezed by the implacable force of irresistible osmotic pressures, I was rapidly translocated into the roots of the Banisteriopsis tree …” He was “carried through the articulating veins toward some unknown destination”. McKenna found himself within the extraordinary cellular mechanisms that turn light into “the molecular stuff of life”. Pulled on a kind of conveyor belt to the place where photosynthesis occurs. His consciousness exploded as he was “smited by the bolt of energy emitted by the phytic acid transducers and my poor water-molecule soul was split asunder”. As this vision ended, he found himself “embedded in the matrix” of the plant’s biochemical makeup. Suddenly he was suspended above the Amazon rainforest, looking over its vast expanse: “The vista stretching to the curved horizon was blue and green and bluish green, the vegetation below, threaded with shining rivers, looked like green mold covering an overgrown petri plate.” McKenna felt: “anger and rage toward my own rapacious, destructive species, scarcely aware of its own devastating power, a species that cares little about the swath of destruction it leaves in its wake as it thoughtlessly decimates ecosystems and burns thousands of acres of rainforest.” He wept. Suddenly a voice spoke to him: “You monkeys only think you’re running things. You don’t think we would really allow this to happen, do you?

Outside, milling under the ubiquitous gaze of security cameras, are bright splashes of colorful souls wearing crystals, beads, and Native American Indian paraphernalia; middle-aged academics with "Erowid" drug website t-shirts; and passengers that give you that odd conspiratorial smile that says, "yes, we are here for the conference." And here we are chowing down on McDonalds and donut King, getting our last hits of civilization before hitting the jungle city of Iquitos and shamanic boot camp. It feels like some whacked-out reality TV show, a generational snapshot of a new psychedelic wave just before it breaks. Bright-eyed Westerners about to die and be reborn in the humid jungles of Peru, drinking the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca...

Are you seeing Jesus yet? Eric the ayahuasca virgin asks me this morning over a late brunch at the Yellow Rose... We're trading visions like trading card stats, comparing our different curanderos and gossiping like schoolgirls while the street vendors and fabric hustlers stand around by the dozen... 'Am I becoming like Jesus would probably be a better way to explain it,' I respond, and it's true. I feel like I'm walking on water. The aftermath of the ayahuasca experience is glorious: I feel lighter, clearner, like a hard drive that's been defragged and all my pathways are re-linked up to each other, whole, and able to express joy once again. This is what it fees like to be healed, my whole body radiates from the inside-out.

Ayahuasca can heal, but it an also be used to kill,' Carlos continues to translate for Juan... The key is remaining humble, being a servant of ayahuasca, not a master. 'Give yourself to the benefit of others, to God,' Juan says, his eyes daring over us, reading our energies. 'You must have a purpose to help other people, a desire to hep others. If you have a pure heart, a humble mind, and faith in your soul--then the Science will open up to you and show you its wonders.

It is true ayahuasca that has the potential to change everything and allow you to see the world in a different way. It's just that from within the perspective of the person undergoing the changes it's also hard to discern which bits are fantasy and which bits are oracular insight. That's part of what the shaman is supposed to be there to help you figure out.

Ayahuasca is a fickle mistress—she likes it when you put out for her, make a show of it, and put some effort in. But ayahuasca is also a plant medicine, and as such she reads you and what you need, and that changes every time, both as you progress on the path and as new issues come to light. Like a high maintenance girlfriend, the relationship with 'aya' can be hard work, but the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.

Ayahuasca ceremonies are usually very structured rituals where the shaman or shamana holds the space and guides the drinkers on their journeys of discovery. The shaman is not just administering the hallucinogenic brew; he or she is also calling in their allies, banishing evil spirits, and safeguarding their immediate physical environment–playing the role of psychic bouncer. And while personalities vary, the role of the shaman in anchoring the physical and spiritual worlds is inviolate, and should be treated with respect.

While I applaud you if you've purged the undeservingness down to your deepest core, the truth is that after thousands of years of living in slavery or borderline slavery, or slavery that feels like freedom despite the fact that you're never free no matter how much of it you accumulate, most of our species is deeply ingrained in the surviving-conforming-winning mode of thinking.

The internal transition that leads us to the type of universal trust where we are happy and content regardless of external factors doesn't ever come from external pursuits; the rat race is a treadmill. Deep and lasting peace comes from a deep experience of being at one with all. By that, I mean a knowing that you are fundamentally a part of nature, a pixel in the art of the universe.

This is a paradoxical unity: complacency leads to a slow and boring death and a life left unlived, while desperation can lead eventually to an unbreakable peace. This is because of the difference between the two kinds of peace: peace from being comfortably numb, and peace from acceptance, trust, and self knowledge.

Seeking comfort is self-centred, while seeking peace from the inside out, through aligning yourself with the Macrocosm is perhaps the most beneficial activity which a human has the ability to undertake. When we see ourselves reflected in everything, and everything reflected in the people we love, only the sociopaths among us can continue to kill the world.

Forgive yourself; you are just a single tiny human being, and berating and judging yourself for every imperfection only distracts you from living your purpose. Focusing on inconsequential failings in yourself only serves to blind you from the light of your inner divinity. Conversely, living from your divinity aligns you with forces that serve to generate a harmonious relationship with the rest of humanity, with our planet and the other species who inhabit her, and with forces beyond.

Because many of us grew up in a world where punishment was rampant, we learned that responsibility should be dodged at all costs. Being responsible is not the same as being at fault, rather it means you recognize that you have a choice, which is between doing what is normal, easy, and destructive, or doing what is inconvenient, uncomfortable, and constructive.

The real difficulty is that you must confront the painful experiences and face your demons while standing in the light to make progress. Otherwise you're swimming in the swamp, pretending to be soaring, and practising nothing but mental masturbation.

Of course, we all deserve compassion for ourselves, forgiveness for the fact that we are born into a world with many rough edges, and kindness towards the calluses and scars that we've formed as a result. Kindness, but not laziness or irresponsibility; not blaming those who have hurt us for our state, whatever that state may be, and valuing ourselves enough to not tolerate toxic behaviours.

You cannot rescue anyone, and you cannot help anyone who does not desire to be helped. To attempt to do so is to step on autonomy, to crush free will, which is a sacred gift granted to all sentient life. This is one of the deeper meanings of “turning the other cheek” and it's one of the most difficult practices you may undertake. It relates to the deepest level of compassion: holding someone with kindness – or holding yourself – through a necessary suffering, a suffering which liberates.

You strengthen the mind for exactly this reason: these are symptoms of a mind that's been weakened by a culture designed to keep you from thinking.

he stumbled across an 18 minute ayahuasca video online that really turned up the heat. Stephen was hooked on Graham Hancock’s initially banned - and now infamous - ‘war on consciousness’ Ted Talk video on YouTube. “It was like someone had lit a fire underneath me,” said Stephen. “I suppose it was what’s widely known as ‘the calling’ when ayahuasca touches your life. “I went from watching a 20 minute video to reading everything I could find about the medicine, watching every video available, and trying to discover everything I could about it. It became like an obsession.” Ayahuasca occupied his thoughts constantly, but Stephen felt alone with it. None of his friends or family had even heard about it, never mind understood it. Still, he made contact with Ayahuasca International and, on September 17, 2015, Stephen arrived at the retreat in Madrid.

Meyer had walked to the window and was looking out across Central Park. The weather was pleasant, and he considered going out onto the porch, but the wind looked rough. The roof terrace would be better, but not by much. That was the problem with tall buildings. You got a great view for an exorbitant price, but it’s like architects forgot how quickly the weather changed as you climbed higher in the air. He took a beat before replying. He didn’t want to admit how much he’d been looking forward to seeing her. Besides, telling Heather about the ayahuasca ceremony he’d already booked with the shaman (and paid for in full) seemed like a jinx. You weren’t supposed to plan surprises for your ex-wife —even drug-related surprises. They both understood that, but the way Meyer sneaked around behind Piper’s back made both him and Heather feel guilty.

She asked Mother Ayahuasca to help her see her true beauty, and to clear away the self-criticism or negative comments she’d held onto for too long.

Ayahuasca visions: The religious iconography of a Peruvian shaman, by Luis Eduardo Luna and Pablo Amaringo.

When love is expressed in life and imbued into every great work, the potential for evolution expands exponentially.

Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, de Stephan V. Beyer. Este libro no aparece en el podcast, pero es el más completo que he encontrado en relación con la ayahuasca.

Something you might think is a tragedy has an opportunity hidden within it, provided you have the strength and understanding to see that.

Beware of ANY vision at all in which you personally have been singled out to play a lead role in the redoing of all human history. You haven’t.

You're never alone if you're with your soul.

Reconnecting with your soul is painful, but the benefits are everlasting.

Of all the things that one can do spiritually, to re-merge with your soul provides the greatest benefit.

wait for the burst of mental expansion that always followed a ceremony … and yeah, that sucked. But what the hell—ayahuasca wasn’t the kind of thing you got addicted to. And he could certainly afford it. Not seeing Heather felt like the bigger hit. He hated to admit how much he missed her. Of course he loved Piper, but if there were such things as soul mates, Heather was his. Too bad she was so goddamned annoying. “I can also meet you in Vail,

As Luis Eduardo Luna explained to me, according to ayahuasqueros, the spirit of a new plant reveals itself with the help of the spirits associated with the ayahuasca. Sometimes, they also tell which plant to use next.

Just be. Don't push, and what is rightfully yours will come. What you have been put on this Earth to do will present itself.

Change: Until we realize we are the problem Our lives will remain in limbo Full of anger, fear and darkness, Until we realize that the situations And the people we think hurt us Will remain trapped in Sadness Change your world, change your life

Ayahuasca.

And now all he wants to talk about is doing ayahuasca,” a woman wearing a turban was saying to Zoe. “He goes down to Peru for the ceremonies and acts like it’s some rare skill he’s learned. I’m like, honey, it’s a drug, not a degree.

And when had a critical eye ever helped me, really? Nobody likes the girl who points out all the inherent sexism on The Bachelor. But people are charmed byt the girl kvelling about nail art, boba tea, and the homeopathic benefits of ayahuasca.

You want an Ayahuasca topper?’ He looks at me through a pair of old leaks. ‘Sure.’ I nod towards Nelly’s stomach. ‘It’ll do the baby good.

Dan explains the trip’s itinerary, which includes trekking through the jungle, boating down the Amazon River, and to my surprise, three Ayahuasca ceremonies.

We experience time different than our elders, and the generation after us will experience time differently as well. Generation after generation has its own set of struggles and programming… Ideas of what is 'right' and 'wrong'. Don’t let it deter you from your path. Love your family. Love them fiercely, with all of your heart and soul. Don’t judge them.

The cost of claiming value comes with the time you invest in your dream. Eventually the price you paid for your investment pays off. Be patient.

You may compare yourself to others, and feel insecure about your own worthiness. Don’t be too hard on 'others' that you perceive to have 'made it' before you. There is no 'other' – we are all human and all have our own set of struggles, even when we 'make it', nothing is ever perfect and the illusion of the internet can be a mirage.

View the gradients of adversity as the colors that paint your story, and the power of experience as what makes you a great teacher, creator, philosopher, entrepreneur, artist, and human. Everything works out eventually. I promise.

Don't think. Drink...ayahuasca.

It was when stumbling down the rain-soaked Andes wearing a woollen poncho, a handwoven sombrero, and high on ayahuasca that Oliver Jardine decided to lie for love. The lying wouldn’t be hard, he was a spy after all.

Jan Kounen’s “Ayahuasca Visions” on YouTube.

therapy and singular transformative experiences (like ayahuasca ceremonies) can take us only so far along the path to healing. To truly actualize change, you have to engage in the work of making new choices every day. In order to achieve mental wellness, you must begin by being an active daily participant in your own healing.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2009),

The big black void in my head was a well-worn path built into my programming. I realized that no number of singular trippy experiences—whether they came from shrooms, acid, ketamine, hyperventilation, or ayahuasca—would ever completely overwrite this programming, no matter how transcendental. But my trip had also shown me that there was one thing that could combat the void for a little while: gratitude. It was the flame that penetrated the darkness, that filled me all the way up. And the only way to keep the flame going was to keep feeding it. I had to force gratitude into my routines in ways I could not ignore or forget. I had to systematize the light.

Don't waste your money on an ayahuasca enlightenment journey to Peru. All you're doing is allowing your primitive mind to take over while you're awake. You can let it do so in sleep quite nicely and without the puking and insect-ridden dangers of Amazonian encounters.