Thursday, August 25, 2011

Ayahuasca Purging

I've been over this before, but someone on a forum I occasionally post to wanted to know if it was better to purge, puke, or hold it in and try not to puke, after they drank ayahuasca. As nearly everyone, most of the time, purges about 30-40 minutes after they drink ayahuasca, and as that purge is potentially the most important element of drinking ayahuasca, at least sometimes, I thought I should weigh in. Here's my response to the general blog of what purging means and whether one should allow it to happen or try to prevent it.

I sometimes feel as I'm just purging liquid. But more often, I'm purging what starts as slow motion re-enactments of sins I've committed against others or those committed against me which I have held on to for no good reason. Sometimes I watch the act--cheating on a girlfriend when I was young, lying to someone when I was a child or adult--50 times in slow motion, painfully, until I suddenly have to purge.
I think the medicine roots around for things you have hidden, sometimes well, sometimes not, and then gives you the chance to rid yourself of their weight. It's an unseen weight, something we don't know what we are carrying around but it's as real as a 20 pound dumbell hung around your neck. You don't need it. Get rid of it. Be lighter. Remember the pain you caused or that was caused to you, but forget the actual deed: we need to remember to learn; we don't need to carry the pain around forever.
I urge my guests to feel free to purge: Sometimes when they challenge me I hold my hand under their mouths: I've never had a guest puke more than I can physically hold in one hand. There's no food in their system to come out. There might be an ounce of bile and two or three ounces of ayahuasca, but that would be a lot. Nonetheless they see enormous amounts. It's as if they are purging bits of dry sponge that they envision expand as they are eliminated and the contact with air makes them grow to huge things. I feel the same when I purge, but I know that physically it's never more than maybe two, three ounces of physical matter. The rest of it is psychic: Heavy, loaded, but not physical.
So purge away and clean yourself of things you needed to learn but which no longer serve you. Let yourself be freed of unnecessary weights holding you down.
Sorry if I've overstepped my bounds here. This is a topic-one of many, granted--that's very close to my heart.

2 comments:

23 said...

Only you, Peter, can bring out the beauty in puking! I'm feeling you! Thanks for this lesson.

obo said...

There are winds
in the upper atmosphere, friends,
that can tear some small bird
that wanders there
limb-from limb
like a hurricane can

Hello Peter,

I enjoy your postings here because you have taken a noble path in your honest reporting, but I think you have wandered into the upper atmosphere and are being battered about, not knowing, clinging to a lot of superstitious nonsense.

One does not get passed one's harmful deeds by this sort of purging. One gets passed one's harmful deeds by comprehending them: how they arise, why they continue, how to avoid them in the future.

As for the pains inflicted on one from the outside, the anger that results is got rid of by exercising empathy and kind-heartedness.

What you are seeing is actually happening in the reverse of your understanding: your mind attempting to explain the unpleasant sensations of the beneficial forces of the drug fighting your physical waste-matter as your guilty feelings and remorse over your past harmful deeds and anger being held by you at the injuries you imagine were unjustly inflicted on you.

Relating to this and the previous related discussion, I would point to the period of cleansing of a few days fasting by Indians prior to undertaking a vision quest using tobacco. Makes sense in terms of cleansing the physical body. I don't know about the drugs you are using, but for other drugs to avoid the nausea, avoid eating for a period prior to use.