guest house
In September of 2017, I spent time with other seekers at an ayahuasca center in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. There, we went without all the comforts of convenience. I walked barefoot on the Earth, slept under spiders the size of my hand, ate from the immediate land and surrendered to nature. Our healers worked with us day and night, providing medicine for the spirit, body, and heart — teaching us to purge the nonessential. In the evenings, we came together for medicinal ceremonies working with Mother Ayahuasca, our beloved meastras and meastros and their sacred Icaros (songs of the plants). This was the most significant experience of my life thus far — transforming my understanding of life, healing, and nature. Below is a stream of consciousness writing more than a month after my experience in the Amazon, from a ceremony I refer to as my “spin-cycle ceremony.”
“This being human is a guest house,” wrote the 13th-century Persian Sunni Muslim poet and Sufi mystic, Jellaludin Rumi. This body, this life, this story—all delicate details of impermanence. Our attachment to existence builds within us a looming thousand foot wave we feel we must outrun for fear of being washed away into oblivion. But, how does one outrun a looming wave cultivated within?
This morning I find myself pulling together silk strands of awareness. Should I tug on any one of them too brashly, it will split into a million fragments too small for my human eyes to see. I recognize my clumsy human comprehension, like a golden retriever puppy, ecstatic to be called. It is far too easy to knock everything over in this space of reverence. So, I’ve been still. Quieting my puppy-mind. Learning to observe in a way I hadn’t touched previously. I thought my stillness, my astute observation would unleash every word I seek in order to share with others, when I float out of the dream of my guest house into the wakefulness of the infinite, pulsating inside the consciousness of my human cells.
All I’ve found is the call to remain quiet. No longer seeking. No longer on the hunt for the “a ha!” to share with others but rather, quiet for quiet's sake.
There is an acute twitch in my ego these days. Quiet doesn’t serve her well. She had plans. She has plans. In fact, she’s still determined to take this story we tell of “us” and somehow turn it into something someone somewhere will want to read. She, my ego, is like a toddler who is so fiercely tired and in need of sleep, but determined not to miss anything, snapping to borrowed wakefulness by the reminder of that thousand-foot wave growing inside. She exhausts me most of the time.
I’ve found writing difficult lately. Well, writing for anyone other than myself. There is such a wide array of eyes scanning my words. I find myself paralyzed in wanting to appease every set, knowing that is impossible. For every set of eyes is attached to a story through which a person comprehends the world. Each story valid and beautiful, regardless of its cohesion with mine. I want, no, I need to tell my story—but I’ve held back for fear of having to spend too much time making it a story others can easily digest.
The space between the last period and the “T” that begins this sentence is vastly larger than it appears. It is the space in which I sat with my stuff. My limitations. My fears. It is the space where the voice of my soul felt as though it were nagging me into stepping out into a spotlight on a dance floor, in a room so still one could hear a pin drop. But I know better. The soul does not nag. It only feels like nagging because my ego and I have grown rigid in our presentation of self to the world. Encouragement can feel horrid when the ego is gripping tightly to the illusionary known.
This is the guest house I have grown into. The one I’ve trained others to recognize as me. What will happen if I step away from it or redesign it? Will it feel like the naked dream so often dreamt while in school? Will the groundlessness feel like I am slipping into nothingness? How will I secure the love and approval needed for survival, if I am unrecognizable?
“The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.”
I know there is enough and yet, my loyalty to being human causes me to forget all I glean from sacred, ego-less moments. There must be some kind of reward in playing small. Some sort of release of hormones that the illusion of security provides. Otherwise, why would we remain in our respective cages, doors wide open?
As I attempt to cross the threshold of my fear, into the unknown, every unkindness and criticism given to me by the world comes rushing forward to restrain me. As my toes eek past the threshold, stories of worthiness, lack, betrayal, violence and oppression grow to an ear-bleeding cacophony. I can’t distinguish fact from fiction. The chaos of criticism and the demand to stay small are maddening and persuasive. The essential boundary between me and all these stories is blurred and every single inch of movement forward feels as though I am pulling the entire world with me, through a doorway only I can fit through.
It seems so dark out there, save for a speck of dusty, twinkling light off in the distance. Now, I’ve pushed my feet through the threshold and my knees are kissing the thick expanse of mystery separating these two worlds. Everything aches, but the volume of naysayers is quieting. I am grateful, I can hear myself again. My joints are red-hot and throbbing all the while, a frigid breeze envelopes me, tempting me to fall back into the warm comfort of the status quo.
I am frozen in a fog of ice, only my eyes able to move, darting from side to side desperately seeking for something warm, something soothing, anything to take away this painful chill.
Now, all is silent.
My eyes exhausted from seeking, I close my lids for a moment of rest. What sounds like a wind off in the distance, I recognize as my own breath. A soft, warm breeze now stirring inside me. I listen. I feel. Then a bolt of light shatters my field of internal consciousness as lightning shatters the sky in a thunderstorm. It’s shocking and followed by a rhythmic drum. A beat I feel in the space of my chest. In this beat, my heartbeat, I see reds and oranges in the vast empty darkness of my field of vision. Specs of light cultivating into familiar shapes. I feel celebration, laughter, joy. And with that, I feel the thousand-foot wave I’ve been exhaustively running from, crash into every vein, every cell, every molecule in my body. I feel a sweat building in me and the frozen shell of my being thaws from the inside out.
I recognize this familiar movement stirring in me. A breeze, a chill, a wind, a drum in my chest—only comprehensible through the filter of time and the naming of things.
Another flash of light shutters through me. Electricity pulsating through the space of my head as though switches are being flipped by some expert navigator. Its time, I know. Time to move forward.
My eyes open.
My body is now halfway between worlds, standing in the balance of the threshold of what is known and everything else. I have released the world behind me. Surrendering the fears and stories I’ve carried for as long as time has existed. I no longer feel imprisoned by others who held onto me—a soft, vast love moves through me in recognizing their fear. With my head turned slightly to the past, I feel a kink in my neck—and with a swell building from my chest, I touch each and every story I played a role in, consciously and with love.
In this space of understanding, everything appears as a paradox and not at all. No good or bad, just varying degrees of what is. Consciousness, I learn, gives us the skill to chart our course, not liberation from rough seas, but rather, expertise in the use of our sail and a map for finding our way home.
With every breath, I feel the universe respond. Never before had I fully recognized the immense power of my breath. My conscious, sacred, breath. When my chest expands, so too does the whole of the universe. It is not “my” breath, but my choice to breathe with the universe, with life.
Turning towards the abyss in front of me, the drum in my chest grows louder. I hear the whisper of what I once said to myself in this moment, “I am afraid.” Yet, now I understand, this isn’t fear. This quick-paced rush in my veins and ever-increasing beat of my internal drum, is something mystical — I associate it with fear because I do not yet understand. It is energy raising my vibration, thawing me out, clearing my gravity.
For liftoff.
Instead of seeking comfort for the pounding in my chest, or naming it as “panic,” I breathe consciously. I listen and feel without judgment. I let the waves of energy move through me without containing them as “fear.” Observing as I might, birds on a breeze. I breathe in to fill my chest with air, as my light-hearted drum pumps to push me up. My feet lift from the threshold, the tips of my toes touching in a delicate kiss and gratitude fills my body. I ascend higher. I wonder less, and observe more.
I thought I had to leap into the abyss. I thought I had to step forward into the black hole where I would fall, fearfully, evaporating into non-existence. I thought too much.
Instead, I am floating. Joy filling my cells.
I understand all is well. This inexplicable space between human comprehension offers symphonies of vibrant color against a seemingly black backdrop. I can’t understand what I see but it is more familiar than everything else I’ve ever known. Grids shift into soft shapes in accordance with my mind projecting the movie of my life onto the dark nothingness. As each person in my story steps forward into view, I feel myself diving into them, to see with their eyes — through the filter of their stories. My chest swells with the ache to comfort them, as they suffer through their own illusions. I feel only compassion. Compassion for myself, as well, for the illusions I so loyally carry. As soon as I recognize “forgiveness” and “gratitude,” a new person appears.
All is well.
I hear the distant songs of my healers fade in and out. Wisdom at my right side, the whole lot of them, in non-human, unfamiliar shapes, reviewing my energy and speaking with my healers who reverently sing to the medicine waking my cells, guiding the Mother where she needs to go. I am safe. My body twitches as energy is tugged and poked. A smile, a laugh, tears, a gasping breath — everything in working order. Energy swirls around me, through me. It fills my lungs until I cough. It encompasses my spine in two entwined serpents from the base of my sacrum, pulling up the shadows until I purge what feels like rivers of remorse, sorrow, and grief.
This is Love.
Suddenly, I feel groundless and disconnected, and with a thud… I pound into the Earth. I am trapped, compressed and I panic, and with a shot, I am floating in indescribable space, trying to touch my toes to the familiar threshold of my life. I am distracted from panic when I see an infant, in utero, floating in an iridescent sac above me. I know, it is me.
This is all too much, I think — we’ve been at this for eons. I need a break — I am exhausted.
Suddenly, I am on my knees rooted to the Earth — I am indistinguishable from the soil and the trees — crouching, instinctually, to give birth. Deep, guttural sounds well up from my belly as I push life through me. I am the channel life moves through. I feel the weight of the world passing from my womb into uncertainty, where hope touches fear, and in a flash I am tiny and swaddled by loving arms after my heroic journey through a dark, tight, unknown space — moving with little effort towards a dusty, twinkling speck of light off in the distance. I am my mother, holding me. I am my father, holding me. I am my sister, my grandparents, my family, my ancestors. I am my community, my country, my dogmas, my world — holding me. Imprinting on me.
A mix of wild awareness and dizziness rapture me for a few seconds before I am thrown onto my back, where I find myself in a hospital bed. It is sterile, cold and I hear a beeping that gives way to a single high-pitched sound. I take one last exhalation — I am outside at a funeral in the late spring. I hear the wailing cries of loved ones along with the muffled tears of those who don’t yet know how they feel, including me. I am dead. I feel loved, most notably, by people who couldn’t show it when I was alive. This awareness moves through me as a golden joy, I feel grateful and at peace. It is unlike how I expected it. I am fully aware, this is my funeral and I know, all is well.
I feel myself crawling on the ceiling of an eye-stingingly bright room. The drum in my chest is silent. The wind in my lungs, gone. I am no-body. There is a hushed panic in the room — a rush, a crash. I am pulled, without consent, from the ceiling and swallowed by the body on the bed. I gasp for air as though I've been underwater for hours, wind back in my lungs, drum in my chest racing — a palpable sigh of relief from the people in the room. “She’s back,” I hear.
“This being human is a guest house.”
Chills cover every inch of my body as my awareness reenters the maloka and reclaims me. I rest in the fetal position with my head towards the center, where the magic happens — where our individual consciousnesses become unified. I have returned to the place of time, where I exist as “human,” in a body with a story and a name I respond to. It feels comforting. I welcome myself home and trace the songs filling up the room back to the lips from which they sing. I feel the mat beneath me, the wood of the maloka beneath the mat, and the Earth holding all of us. I feel the sweet sound of breath from the travelers next to me, for whom I am overwhelmed with love. I see the structure of the space, the whimsy of the nearly-full moonlit sky kissing every plant around me. It is still dark, I have only been traveling for a few hours. It feels like millennia.
A maestra sits before me. A shadow with sparks of light radiating around her. I feel unbridled gratitude with an accompanying smile well up from my toes to my lips, reaching out for her without hands. She giggles, clears her throat and says, “thank you,” even though she does not speak English. Then continues blessing me with her song.
I feel home. I feel whole. All is well.
All is well.
“This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.”