Through my years of effort trying to explain the bliss of meditation in ways that are understandable to people, perhaps, too logical, skeptical, or insensitive, I have become calloused. Not great. Coming to Peru, I had the suspicion that ritualistic magic and shamanic ideals would both impress me and, in that, remind me that some things are meant to be felt only by those willing to feel them. Beware of the need to understand. Beware of the impulse to leverage moments in the name of progress. Look around and ask yourself deeply, "Where has this desperation to progress taken me?" Has it not only led us in circles, in certain ways?
So, I am on the banks of a river with two friends, at the base of Eucalyptus tree that stretches out in the form of a great trident. Its two arm-like branches with shedding, colored bark, and its trunk shoot upwards. The firepit is built. Our rugs are laid out. The tree is adorned with a tattered flag of the Jaganath, the great lid-less eyes of Lord Krishna. Drums are at the ready.
We swipe earth over our faces and throats and rub ash on our bodies, half as play, half in a sincere attempt to connect to the ancestral world we left behind long ago. With three coca leaves in our hands, we speak to the sky, earth, and what is within us. A gray-soft stone is pulled from a woven bag, broken, and eaten. It is sweet. Coca leaves are eaten. Earthy. Bitter. We look at each other in appreciation for the company. Then, a bag of black honey is revealed. The Ayahuasca, a psychedelic concoction made from boiled tree root and tobacco, has been mixed with honey. It makes it easier to transport through places where magic is illegal. On my tongue, it becomes rancid and repulsively bitter. Swallowing it from a plastic bag, like an infant feeding on its mother, I am repulsed but compelled to take in a strange and natural medicine. Then, we wait for the body to break down the sap and release the tsunami of DMT. This is the actual chemical that generates the effect, a tryptophan related to other commonly occurring feel-good chemicals like serotonin and dopamine.
The trip. A rush of cool, tingling sensation rips through my skin. It's a feeling of physical dissolution. My sense of mass breaks down and I shatter like glass. I continue shattering into shards, into tiny fragments, into dust, into molecules, into atoms. In the space of shattering, this same cold vacuum swirls in and through my evaporated form. Spiraling in perfect symmetry I think of a zen koan, "Do not be amazed by the true dragon."
I'm literally in my practice, just sitting with folded hands and a softly bent spine, eyes closed. In the whirl of endless-formless things, my lifeline is, of course, the breath I have befriended over the years. I manage my peace. Easy. Necessary. Without it, I would be swept away. Cognizant there is a spirit within me, a teacher in my body - Ayahuasca, like most psychedelics, is seen as sentient - I am compelled to speak to it. It holds its own lifeforce. It is a literal teacher with intentions to educate and connect. I begin to chant a mantra.
"I am your temple, my honored guest. Rejoice with me." Over and over again. For two hours I sit in the spiraling arms of delirious ecstasy, stable within my center, at peace within a practice I recognized is strong.
"I am your temple, my honored guest. Rejoice within me." Rejoice within the peace I have built. Rejoice within the warmth of a heart that chooses openness. Rejoice within a body that knows where its peace is. Outside, our guide is drumming and chanting to Krisha and to Rama. Then, the whirlpool ends and my eyes open.
What this revealed to me is the trajectory of a healthy meditative practice. In humble confidence, let me explain. From stress management to divinity, here it is: One first comes to sit because they are restless. Their heart, mind, or body trembles with or without reason. The ongoing battle with what can be reduced to doubt has become so exhausting, the confusion as to why life is not flowing easily so deafening, and a small sense that it might be their own doing painfully growing to the point that they submit to stillness. "I do not know what to do. So, let me try, for the first time, doing nothing."
In that stillness, great questions flutter. Where is my power? Where is my consciousness? Where is my capacity to love, again? So, the sitting game begins in the hope of a peace that is both forgotten and because of that unknown. In the sitting, one reaches into the snake den of this doubt and endures mental toxicity. Grabbing hold of this mind that tends to slither into its fear and hiss in reactiveness to every passing thought, force is used because force is all that is currently remembered.
Over time, sitting with these serpents, perhaps holding too tightly and fighting too desperately, a thought of tolerance blooms. "Do I need to fight this and exert my strength so brutally into myself? It's only me that I'm raging against, after all." Sitting leads to an embodied ability to cherish one and all, but most importantly, the one that matters most; the Self. Once we can love ourselves, unchanged, in our imbalances and virtues, we have the opportunity to see ourselves as sacred, as worthy, as temples. We become proud enough to welcome others into our hearts to behold our broken and perfect world.
Of the many beautiful strangers, there is one guest that they who sit sit for. The trajectory of sitting, the result of meditation, is far beyond stress management and self-love. These are necessary steps for a much holier point. The consequence, which is distinct from being a goal, is to become a temple for the divine, itself. One day, like a great stag with its crown of nature and stars held high and easily, God comes to behold you - a being that has learned to love itself. Because there is no shame in this achieved person, despite their small stature, and perhaps dirty home, they open their doors in great reverence and humble confidence.
"I am your temple, my honored guest. Rejoice within me."
"I am your temple, my honored guest. Rejoice within me."
"I am your temple, my honored guest. Rejoice within me."
