After the battle of Kuruksetra, India, five Pandavas, all brothers, came to the lake to rest. After waking up, the oldest Yudishtir, came to understand that all his brothers have died from drinking water from the lake. At that moment he heard the voice from the sky, telling him: “Your brothers are dead, but I can bring them back to life if you answer the following question”. Yudishtir, eager to have his brothers back, nodded in approval. The voice continued:”What is the biggest illusion in this world?”
Youdishtir answered: “Our ancestors, our grandfathers and fathers have all died, but we think we never will. That is the biggest maya, illusion, in this world”. Needless to say, the answer was correct and the rest four Pandavas came back to life.
When thinking of death, we are usually terrified of loss that it brings with it. We cannot imagine our loved ones gone and life without them. But, somehow, we rearly relate the death to the self. The attitude, usually unsaid, sounds like this: Death, old age, disease…it happens to others, but I will not end up like that. No, not, me. That has nothing to do with me.”
In many ancient societies, mostly among aboriginal people’s of different continents, we encounter the initiation in the passage of death. The initiate would dig his own grave, so to speak, and would be buried in sand. He would be left with just a straw in his mouth to breath through, for a day or so.
In the jungles of Amazon, shamans use the ayahuasca brew so they can face their fear of death and step across the threshold of impermanence into infinity. No wonder the word ayahuasca means “vine of death," sometimes also translated as “vine of souls”. As we change relationship to death, we greatly change relationship to life.
For some of us, this difficult ordeal of fighting death, and in the same time retrieving from life, began very early. Through much work I’ve done in my journey of self-discovery, my birth issues have come up numerous times, always on the next, deeper level of the spiral. I would just think to myself:, ok, now I released a lot, this should take care of it…and then in a couple of months or years, here it was, it would surface again.
So when I signed up for ayahuasca retreat, my intention was to open my heart. Little did I know how that would happen. And, as always, it happens on the least expected ways.
For the first three ceremonies I have definitely experienced my death. In any way you want to imagine. Most of the time it was difficult: purging, nausea, numbness of the limbs that would spread throughout the whole body. Death of mind, ego, body, brain. Of course, it was not literal death, but the sense of it was real, as my ego, the false sense of self, was imploding.
At one point, during the ceremony, I thought to myself: If I was dying for real right now, in my life outside of ceremony, my death would be an agony. There was so much resistance in my being, to the suffering, to the experience, to the life itself, that my whole life, seemed at that moment, was dedicated to fighting and avoiding death at any cost. Feeling my heart beating slower and slower (due to plant medicine), I told to myself: Ok, let’s just die. There is no point of fighting anymore. Ok, death, that’s it, let’s just do it.
Moment when life shifts, perception changes, new perspectives open.
A few moments later, or who knows when in the linear time, I had a vision. I saw a baby with an umbilical cord around its neck. It was me. Umbilical cord is a channel of life - all baby’s needs, while in the womb, are taken care of through it. It means everything, it means life. As the time of birth came, and I started moving along with contractions, the cord somehow wrapped around the neck and started to chock me. As I would make effort to be born, the cord would get tighter and I couldn’t breath. My life was literally becoming cause of my potential death. Those two currents have ever since been deeply interwoven and embedded in my DNA and my whole consciousness. More I fought death, more life became meaningless. But I had to keep on fighting just to stay alive. This vicious cycle created a lot of unconscious undercurrents and tensions inside of my whole being.
In this vision I saw umbilical cord untwining and becoming straight again. The fetus was free, emerged from darkness and started dancing, becoming taller, then small again. I knew then: the loop of my life has been disentangled.The loop I was stuck in, loop of life and death being seen as two opposite forces.
I saw what we usually call life force on the left side, and I saw smoky energy on the right, that represented death. The two slowly moved to each other until they overlapped. The life force and the death, are the same energy. This is something I need to be some more time with…it didn’t quite settled in me, but it opened completely new perception of existence.
Since then, the statement: I can go (die) at any given day and moment, seems more real to me. Interestingly enough, I don’t have fighting impulse, and do not feel so much fear as in the past. This statement sounds just very real and possible, and that is all.
This experience was very profound. So profound that it makes me silent. And in silence there is a whole different reality leading to infinity.
This was initiation. It seems that life does not get real until we face the death. It feels like spiritual life and all the searching we do, does not become serious until we surrender, in a real sense of that word.Surrender even to that we are fearing the most.
Then we get anchored in the Self, luminous and infinite. We stop living life out of fear, but we rather start living life that is rooted in life, in our brilliant core star.
Namaste.
*Artwork: Alex Gray - Oversoul
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