Ayahuasca: Reigniting the Fire Within
Even in Siberia, as I was told, which is quite far away from Peru, people know about Ayahuasca. It is unlikely that you haven’t heard about it too. But hearing about it and taking it are two different things. Just hearing without taking action will do nothing for you. The words about it will simply remain in your imagination. Hearing about it and actually making concrete steps towards it, can bring healing and change to your life.
Let’s be honest here. Ayahuasca is work. It’s hard work. But the payoff is worth it. If properly guided and approached, Ayahuasca medicine is safe to work with. There are certain conditions that you must fulfill to ensure your safety, which you can read here.
I’ll skip my story of 15 years of personal struggle in relation to Ayahuasca, and leave that for my new book to tell it all. But for now, I can say that my rock-solid atheist background and strong skepticism, present for much of my life up until discovering psychedelics and plant medicine, underwent a total transformation during the time of working with sacred plant teachers.
Perhaps I was picked to write on this topic due to my extreme stubbornness and inability to believe something without proof. Don’t judge me harshly. As a cult survivor, one learns to live one’s life with caution when it comes to faith and belief systems. Brainwashing and indoctrination are something I have experienced myself, and have seen their destructive results on many people.
Coming out of it with a sound mind wasn’t easy. I won’t go into the cult dynamics here, this I have already done in my first book PATH Seeking Truth in a World of Lies, but just to make a point, I must say that although it was a difficult six years being subjected to brainwashing, I became resilient to mind control as the result of it and now I feel capable in helping others to deprogram. In fact, during this process, I developed a highly tuned bullshit meter that responds to lies, confusion and nonsense with an allergic reaction, smelling it like a trained dog smells drugs in international airports. This is not to say that I now see myself as a professional cult deprogrammer and expect emails in this regard. Not at all. It’s never fun to deal with these low vibes. This I would leave to experts. But if you come to us with this background or are currently involved in such an organization, would like to find clarity and leave it in the past, you will be supported and helped to find the necessary understanding and healing in this regard.
Many of those who claim to be spiritual teachers are lacking the depth to actually be one. Since writing my first book in 2013, not much has changed in that sense. Or, if it did, only to the worse. I see spiritual misguidance as a spiritual disease that can only be cured on a personal level. You cannot change the way things are and fire all those people who built a spiritual following around themselves full of devotees. And even if you could, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do because this would go against the principle of religious freedom. People have the right to believe in whatever they want to believe. But it is certainly your right to fire yourself out of any ideology that you might have been or still are subjected to in your life. Not all of it has malevolent intent. Some concepts are simply misunderstood and, in this sense, it is self-destructive even though it doesn’t lead you to bankruptcy and suicides like it has been a reality for a number of people in the cult where I was digging holes in the ground in search of Enlightenment.
With all that is happening in the world today, true spiritual guidance is more precious than gold. You can have plenty of gold but how does it help you if you continue living in fear? Who to listen to? Who to believe? Who to follow? The new ‘’teachers’’ are popping up online daily like mushrooms after the rain. But no amount of Orion channellers, ET Ambassadors, UFO enthusiasts and goddesses from the fifth dimension will change anything in your life unless you find the courage to shift your perception through higher consciousness and see yourself and the world in a different light. This direct experience of reality can yield direct knowledge that actually has the power to make changes in your life. Of course, here I am speaking about the power and the wisdom that we find in a plant medicine world, which with the right set, setting and guidance, can provide a profound body, mind, spirit level healing and expand your understanding to a whole new level. No number of messages allegedly coming through space from interdimensional beings or telepathic communication from brothers and sisters from distant constellations would make you feel at peace if you don’t know yourself. And self-knowledge doesn’t come from the outside.
So, who to listen to? This is an important question to be asked and there is more than one answer to it. One of the right answers is to listen to yourself. The only problem with it is that you must have the Self to listen to. If your heart is asleep and you live in your head, then listening to yourself might not be the best idea. You can simply be brainwashed without knowing it. This is why we say “brainwashing“ but never heart washing. The heart cannot be deceived, it always knows the truth even when the mind is blind. In cult psychology this is called cognitive dissonance. Many people suffer from it. In this case, you have to find someone who has the wisdom to guide you from your head into your heart, so you start feeling yourself beyond concepts and words. The best gurus for me I found living in a non-human form. These are not ET’s from Orion or Pleiades. These are sacred plant teachers, who live here on Earth sharing with us the same planet and breathing with us the same air. I listen to them attentively.
When the inner Self is awakened, listening to it becomes a priority. This is your inner guru. The following logical question is how to awaken your true Self? And here is the crossroad in which many people get stuck while arguing with one another about methods. I have done it too in my books and repeating it here would be somewhat redundant. Yet still, I will stress the importance of having direct experience as a reliable guide to self-knowledge and plant medicine as powerful and very effective catalysts that can be used to reach this goal.
These amazing, truly magical, non-human ancient teachers are here to help us heal and spiritually grow so we won’t destroy ourselves and our planet in our mindless way of living.
We both inherit the world from our ancestors and borrow it from our children. What do we leave for them? Physically, morally and spiritually toxic environment? A dystopian future not worth living in? The medicine makes you aware of your impact on Earth and those who will come after you. It connects you to the planetary mind – some call it Gaia, so you can see life on Earth from a bigger evolutionally scale. Seeing yourself as being a part of an amazing organism that is life on Earth, makes you want to protect and preserve it.
We have completely forgotten how to connect to our spiritual core. This harbors depression, anxiety and fear with which people live their lives. This disconnection from yourself is the cause for mental breakdowns and illnesses. Materialism creates the inner void that we try to fulfil with all kinds of stuff. But none of this is actually satisfying. Being dissatisfied with the way things are, many people are looking for an alternative to both materialism and religion that promises eternal life but fails to provide sufficient guidance and spiritual comfort to live the life you actually have. Organized religion is spirituality for mass consumption that is also a part of the same system that keeps our mind captives through our lives. Organized religion never meant to be a cure. Quite on the contrary, it is designed to keep minds on a permanent spiritual lockdown.
But this dissatisfaction can serve two purposes. One is constructive and the other one is destructive. One can become your medicine while the other one can prove to be a poison for your mind. If you use this energy of emptiness and despair as a fuel to find your true path in life, that is obviously a medicine for you, but if you give up and can’t see through it while falling into despair, then most likely you will spiral down into self-destructive behavior and depression.
An empty, monotonous, rat race in pursuit of illusions is just not satisfying for the human soul – a soul that is crying for help. This inner vacuum just cannot be filled up with food, sex, money and false hopes. The explosion of plant medicine shamanism in the last decade is the outcry of the wounded spirit of the collective. People are hungry for real experience, true knowledge and practical wisdom to serve them in their daily life. This I see as a major drive behind thousands of people who come to Peru every year to work with plant medicine, with depression being a common trait among them. And as these people find healing in a matter of weeks and leave their addictive, mind numbing antidepressants in a trashcan, they bring others to it who they care about. Thus, the process of healing continues. But depression, although common, is not the only reason to work with sacred plants. In fact, it’s a minor issue to resolve in comparison to the mystery of life in which we were given a chance to play our part. Healing is where the journey begins.
A quest for truth is just as big in many people. It was in my case too. I never came to Peru for healing. I was a spiritual seeker looking for answers. For me it was a quest for meaning from the beginning that has grown into a healing practice and personal philosophy over the years. How this has changed my life, I have shared in my books The Mescaline Confession: Breaking Truth the Walls of Delusion and the recent one The Cactus of Sanity: Huachuma in the Time of Chaos which was published during the lockdown in Peru in October, 2020, for those who would like to hear more about it. I can only say that my gratitude for finding plant medicine in my life is infinite and beyond all expression. My humble efforts to write and talk about it are merely an attempt to pay my dues.
Mystical tourism in Peru does provide a unique opportunity for many people to find deep holistic, long lasting healing and expansion of consciousness. Peru is a gold mind of shamanic treasure and it has been for millennia. But it has to be approached with due diligence, respect and cautiousness if what you are looking for is more than a selfie for your Instagram. Not everyone who wears a headdress is a shaman. The good news is that plant medicine is real and very effective and is available for anyone who is truly seeking it. Plant teachers are who I listen to wholeheartedly.
Peru is a beautiful and safe country to travel as much as Ayahuasca is a safe medicine to work with if you do it right. Don’t blame the car for an accident if the taxi driver is drunk. Same with Ayahuasca, she is a spiritual vehicle that can transport you to the deepest parts of your mind and beyond, help you heal and change the way you live your life. But you must show up and bring your best to the table. Ayahuasca demands respect and she will make you respect her in one way or another. It’s just better for you if you do it voluntarily.
Nature constantly transmits healing energies, but it is us who are blocking the signal. Ayahuasca is a powerful potentiator of this signal.
The explosion of plant medicine shamanism that occurred in the last decade, will double or triple during the next couple of years. If before the pandemic it was a matter of curiosity for some and healing for others, today it is simply a matter of salvation to all.
I believe that fairly soon an enormous amount of people will realize that plant medicine is in fact a life jacket that can help one retain one’s sanity in the world drowning in Covid psychosis, vaccine-induced mutant strains, medical tyranny and government terrorism, totalitarian dictatorship, weaponized covid and future climate lockdowns, covid concentration camps that will be used for detention of political dissidents, pharmaceutical zombification, pedophilia, sexualization and perversion of children, economic collapses, food crises, and of course, domestic and world wars. Countries collapsing one after another into chaos and lawlessness and a skyrocketing crime rate will shake our civilization to its core and perhaps raise a question if we even have a future.
I can see how imagining aliens coming down to bail us out and beaming corruption and evil out into space can provide some level of comfort and hope, but until and if this ever happens, it is up to us to move through this mess. Saving yourself from crippling fear, disorienting confusion, and debilitating depression is a matter of personal responsibility.
Our medicine pots cannot save the world but they are saving us and those who come to work with us from giving in and losing hope while living in a world that is falling apart.
A traditional Ayahuasca medicine work is capable of providing you with healing, guidance and support that you need to live your life with and move through turbulent times with a strong sense of Self and connection.
Please watch the following video that I hope will help you to move through fear of Ayahuasca and towards your healing and well-being.
The time to act is now.
Ayahuasca Odyssey: A Journey through Fear into Love
About the Author
Sergey Baranov is the founder of Huachuma Wasi, a healing center in The Sacred Valley of the Incas, Peru. He is the author of Path: Seeking Truth in a World of Lies, The Mescaline Confession: Breaking Through the Walls of Delusion and The Cactus of Sanity: Huachuma in a Time of Chaos. Sergey’s passion for life on Earth and its preservation is the driving force behind his work. You can contact Sergey at www.huachumawasi.com.
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