My meditation journal

[Thittato]

Pretty awesome day today. I also did weight-lifting and 25 min of yin-yoga now at the end of the day. Before that I was playing Chess at the local Chess-club and it was really awesome and cozy again with this nice feeling of autumn settling in. When I came home I had a nice ritual where I boiled the Ayahuasca for 10 min while listening to Ayahuasca songs. It is a common custom to do when it has been standing in the fridge for a while in order to make it ready for use. Partly to disinfect it I think in case it has been getting bacterias or something. When I was done boiling it I took out my guitar and sang a few mantras to this brew.

The conclusion I'm going to bed with tonight is that meditating for 30 min per day is really perfect for me. Just absolutely right.

[Thittato]

Coming back home to myself

30 min meditation again today. Very good meditation. Feels like there is peace in my heart again. Something happened yesterday as I was going to bed. I think maybe because I was boiling the ayahuasca the vapours from it gave me a similar effect as if I was microdosing on it. Anyways, it triggered a feeling of coming back home into my life as it is again. I've been all over the place lately. So much process again. But right now there is a feeling of being landed again. Might last long, might last short, but good to feel that things can be ok just as they are.

[Thittato]

Ayahuasca solo-ceremony yesterday (with some very fortunate support at the climax from an unexpected and spontanous trip-sitter).

So I woke up a little bit late in the day yesterday, because my sleep is all messed up because of working night-shifts, but that is ok. I started the day with 30 min of meditation, and I planned on cleaning my whole place and start to prepare for the ceremony if the vibe was getting right, but since I woke up so late I wasn't sure, but I decided to start cleaning at least and maybe do it later if the vibe got right. However just to get in tune with the medicine I started with a light dose as I was cleaning and that brought me in touch with a lot of vulnerability, and when I was finished cleaning, the atmosphere in my home was really nice and conducive for a ceremony, so I decided to do the second cup, which was a strong dose.

The light dose was at 15.00, and the strong dose was at 18.30. I have to admit that as it was starting to kick in around half an hour later I was starting to get a little afraid, but I was lying in my bed and listening to Ayahuasca-music and it was sort of manageble, but still it wasn't quite what I was looking for. I mean I was totally blasted and fragmented and everything, but I couldn't just lie there anymore and just experience it. At first I was afraid that I was abandoning my mission of letting the medicine work on me and just lying there and breathing in it, but then it was sort of when I'm at a ceremony we do ceremonial work and the tools I had for working with this state I was in - it just wasn't enough to just lie there alone and listening to music.

So I decided to go for a walk instead, and fortunately at that point my friend who gave me the Ayahuasca called and we decided to go for a walk in nature together, so he became my spontanous and unplanned babysitter. It was much nicer to have someone to go for a walk with and talk about all the various processes that was happening to me. At 19.15 we smoked a pipe of cannabis together. This is something they do in some branches of the Santo Daime church when they've reached the top of the second cup. I have never done it myself, but it was interesting to try. The horror from the ayahuasca intensified, but I was also getting some cannabis highness mixed into the horror which gave it a paradoxical mix of horror and feelings of being in a celestial realm at the same time. It was all strongly represented by the forrest we were in. The depth and the darkness and thickness of the forest represented some kind of primal archetypical fear in us - while at the same time the top of the trees was sort of the crown jewels of heaven. It was pretty wild and pretty much at the top of how much intensity I could handle. I kept saying to my friend in a fun way "This is really the top limit!" to which he laughed. It was sort of nice to walk around in that state and to talk a lot with him about various themes I have going in my life right now - both psychological and spiritual.

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to have anything more, neither ayahuasca nor weed, but when I came home, I had finally reached a state of surrender, and I decided to have a third medium cup because I figured that would be the fruits of all the hard work I had done. Since I was in a state of deep surrender I was pretty sure the horror wouldn't return and now I was victorious and really ready to just really bake the medicine in even deeper. First I meditated for 1 hour after I drank the 3rd cup at 23.50, and then I was lying in my bed for one hour in immersion just surrendering very deeply into all the various fractals and geometric patterns that was interacting with the ayahuasca music I was listening to. It was a much more successful immersion than the one I had attemped to do after the 2nd cup, and it felt like the medicine was just working really deeply on me. All the themes that had been going on and that I was in conflict about - like how lonely I felt without the support of my ayahuasca group - they were all just gone and it was just really nice to be in my own company and to really just bake myself in the spiritual light of this medicine. After lying in the bed for an hour I figured I was at the tail of the 3rd cup because it was starting to get less intense, so I decided to ride out the tail while doing a 25 min program of guided yin yoga from youtube, and that program was just really really perfect for the state I was in. I don't think I've ever felt that I have worked that deeply in yin yoga before, and it was just the perfect way to round it off.

Around 03.00 at night after the yin yoga I was started to feel that I was going in for landing. I was still in a strong afterglow, and I knew it would be hard to fall asleep, but the feeling of being on a trip was fading. I decided to go down into the basement and get my clothes which I had been putting in the washing machine on the first cup, and it was so nice to hang my newly washed clothes up for drying in my appartment in the afterglow while listening to beautiful mantra music. It felt like a very symbolic act of closing the ceremony and returning to my daily life.

I was falling asleep at around 08.00 in the morning, and then I woke up at 12.00 again, and today has just been really amazing and I have felt so released from a lot of the heavy processes that has been working in me lately. I felt like I really did a full and complete round of psychological and spiritual cleansing. Maybe there are more rounds to be done, but this cycle was really full and deep.

It seems with my experiences with Ayahuasca from before, and with this experience yesterday, it seem like the first cup is usually tuning in and getting into contact with whatever psychological and spiritual work that one needs to get in touch with, and the 2nd cup is really forcing a very strong psychological and spiritual struggle which is really intensified at its climax and then when one can no longer bear this struggle and resistance anymore and one has marinated long enough in this conflict then eventually one lets go and surrenders and gives up and one is no longer willing to hold on to this tension, and when it is time for the 3rd cup one can get ready for a new and intense wave but this wave has usually a much stronger flavour of surrender and reaping the fruits of all the hard work one did on the second cup.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. Today I've been torn up and wallowing in the therapeutic issues that I worked on on the ayahuasca trip. I guess these cycles are how things are for me no matter what kind of therapeutic process I go through. There is an immediate relief for some time after the session is over, and then another wave with the same material hits pretty hard again. Could also just be life, but I'm pretty sure this state I'm in now is a direct consequence of the ceremony I did 2 days ago.

[Thittato]

Had to go to bed very early tonight because I was so exhausted, and now I woke up in the middle of the night and have been playing guitar for 1 hour and I feel very inspired again and very happy about this ayahuasca session. The first after-wave of therapeutic material has been cleared out. There are probably more to come. It takes a while to stabilize again after something like that. I particularly got a lot of inspiration on music this time. I need to do more work on my guitar. Ayahuasca was the primary catalyst as to why I started to play guitar many years ago, but I still got much more work to do in order to get my guitar-playing to a decent level, so that is something that I'm going to prioritize this autumn.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Thittato

[Michal__]

Which technique do you use?

[Thittato]

11 hours ago, Michal__ said:

Which technique do you use?

Buddhist Vipassana meditation. The noting technique that they practice in the Mahasi Sayadaw tradition. I'm inspired by how modern teachers like Daniel Ingram, Kenneth Folk and Shinzen Young is teaching this noting technique.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today, and then later in the day I went to a cacao and yoga ceremony where we drank ceremonial cacao, did meditation, yin yoga and yoga nidra. It was a beautiful experience. My intention was to use this much milder ceremony as a way to round off my own Ayahuasca ceremony. My other intention with this ceremony was to set the intention to deepen my relationship with my guitar this autumn.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today, weight-lifting and 2 sessions of 25 min of yin yoga. Pretty nice.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. I've felt a lot of vibrations in my heart-chakra today. Feels like my heart is open again and that I have a lot of self-love. My heart is varm. I think the Ayahuasca prepared for this, and then the cacao gave the last mild push. Pretty nice. Maybe it can stay this way for some time.

[Thittato]

Weight-lifting, 25 min yin yoga and 30 min meditation.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. There is a new brightness behind my closed eyelids that has been activated after the ayahuasca ceremony. I think it comes because I feel more spacious, open and loving. Like there is more inner brightness.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. Feeling so inspired by the Ayahuasca experience still. Must have been one of the best sessions I have ever had. It is more than a week ago and I'm still in the afterglow.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. Been depressed today. But I've been in bed all day because of a cold. It was probably right with some downtime now after how high I've been flying lately.

[Thittato]

One really good thing though is that I have been very inspired in my guitar-playing ever since the Ayahuasca session on tuesday September the 15th. Even though I was depressed today, when I picked up the guitar I felt really happy. I've been drilling on 3 simple classical solos, and it is so fun to see how much improvement there is every day. Soon I've nailed them totally. And they are also such great exercise for my fingers - making my fingers way more adjusted to the playing. Those classical pieces are steroids for guitar-playing fingers.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today. First time in a long time I’ve been feeling a good sense of traction in my meditation again.

[Thittato]

And then weight-lifting and 25 min yin yoga as I just came home from working night-shift. Such a nice way to unwind before I go to bed. I'm starting to find a really nice and natural flow between weight-lifting, yoga and meditation.

[Thittato]

30 min meditation today as well. Very good flow. Fully engaged in the process. It is interesting that difference between being fully engaged in meditation versus only going through the motions because it is a routine one just has to get through.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Thittato

[Thittato]

25 min yin yoga yoday as well as I came home from working night-shift. Feeling very inspired lately. One of the best things that has happened after the Ayahuasca session i did 12 days ago is that my home has been constantly clean and tidy since this. I don't allow it to get messy anymore. Things are immediately put back into where they belong when I'm finished using them. The whole ayahuasca ceremony I did was woven into my housecleaning. I did a total cleaning of my home after the first cup in order to prepare my home to be a ceremonial space when I was going to take the second cup which usually goes way deeper, and at the end of the ceremony I was hanging up my clothes fresh from the washing machine as I was listening to some nice ayahuasca hymns. I remember I felt so successful about the whole thing as I was hanging up my clothes. I have enough Ayahuasca for one more ceremony, and I almost did this ceremony 1 week ago, but I'm very glad I didn't because I have enough fuel from the one I already did to live on and to integrate and work with for quite a while. It is also really good to get back into my daily life fully again, and not be all Ayahuasca about everything for too long. And it is also really nice to land in the daily habit of guitar-playing which is totally something I got from the ceremony, but to also be more realistic about my guitar-playing, and not be so megalomanic about it as I usually am right after a ceremony.

[Thittato]

30 min today as well. Really back into the sense that these 30 minutes are the most important activity that I do during the day.