Coming to a ceremony

I would like to talk today about coming to a ceremony, coming to a plant ceremony in more specific. First of all, what are the reasons for us to come for a ceremony? And well, usually we heard something about the medicine, we learned something about the plant medicine, we are feeling that it is something important for us, and that it is calling if we have a day's attitude to be called for something, or it is something of benefit to those who are important for us, so that it helps them in some way or other, or we just heard a couple of songs or chants over YouTube, on the other hand we have got our own situation, we are realizing that we have got what we call usual suffering, we are confused in some ways, we are sick in some ways, we have some illnesses that we need to treat, and we cannot, if you are being misled or burnt out, lost in relationships, we experience loss of energy, or we experience the consequences of a particular trauma, all of those are legitimate reasons for us to think about, okay, I perhaps need that, as well we perhaps have some attitude towards that ceremony is something else, something different, not the usual way we treat illnesses and confusions, we might look at this from this perspective, and rarely even know what it actually is, so I'd love to discuss this a little bit, and considering that many of those who are present would be coming for a ceremonial journey or a ceremonial workshop, it sort of answers most important things related to preparation, first of all I need to say that feeling anxious about the medicine journey is completely okay, this is very much expected and I will explain why, there is a reason why we call a medicine workshop as ceremony, it sort of positions somewhat separately from a usual idea of psychedelic journey or healing encounter, it is really a ceremony and the raw valve reasons by me, better use the sport and understand it, first of all contemporary Western mind is usually largely ignorant about what the ceremony is, primarily because there are not many points of reference, I mean in our regular westerners life we don't usually encounter a ceremonial journey in the way that used to be widespread across most of the tribes and most of the cultures that existed in various civilizations that have populated our planet, now there are not many that are left but we still have this beneficial opportunity to learn from the traditions that keep the notion of healing ceremony, medicinal ceremony, it's perhaps better to explain what it is not to start off and then it shapes what it is, so first of all it's not a psychedelic journey type of vacation, it's not a way to distract yourself from your usual life, although of course we are dealing with an unusual process, meaning that it's trans-driven, so we are definitely in a very particular state of mind, it's definitely what has a capacity to use visionary states and a fast-paced environment, so if anything it's usually not boring, however it can be boring, if we are dealing with the sense of boredom we might encounter that as well, but yet we are not there for states, we are not there for illuminated, heightened visionary states per se, if you are looking for visionary states, I guess what you go for Netflix and that gonna create a pretty good opportunity for you to dream awake, or you read a good book if you are in the mood and that's definitely one of the most visionary experiences you can encounter by reading a text and creating images in your head, or you have a good sleep and perhaps you have a much cheaper and faster opportunity to have a journey, medicinal ceremony is definitely not a psychedelic journey from this perspective, it can be dull, it can be uninteresting, it can be even tiresome, you know, but the service is its own purpose, so it's definitely not a magical appeal to cure something you encounter in your life, and we are to some extent used to use pills for all different things, like if you feel pain, we would take perhaps ibuprofen or if you feel nausea, we would take some pills to deal with that, many of us know anti-depressants and their action or what are else and medicinal ceremony, medicinal process is not that, because while we are taking a pill to cure something, we usually tend to come back to our regular patterns of thinking, from behaving, of acting, occasionally a particular substance going to change that for a while, but traditional approach to what causes an sickness and illness is pretty much interrelated, the action of mind and the action of body, even though we might be trying to fix something, we are not automaton, we are not a mechanism that can be fixed by putting a screwdriver here or changing the code there, a human experience is way more complex and intertwined, so from that perspective we should not really approach it as a magical tool to deal with our stuff, as well, even though it's quite widespread in Aboriginal cultures, we better shouldn't treat it as a pill to cure our spiritual or psychic or even circumstantial existence, it's not magic pill to make us a more lucky or more happy in general sense, although we might be luckier and happier after the journey but for a lasting result we better look into ourselves and this is where the real magic starts, now it's not consciousness expansion, so if you are not here in the business of expanding consciousness, first of all it's really a lucky concept that consciousness can be expanded, I mean that's a really weird starting point for many reasons, the thing that we've got a limited consciousness and that it has to be expanded in some way, and the other thing is that the only thing that we can actually expand by thinking that way is our ego, that is if unhealthy, usually not really a good thing to expand, bloating our ego can only be helpful if it is a provocative process of popping it once it's bloated, so we better not do this, we better go into process in a more open-minded way, you know, not really putting a particular concept into the equation, finally it's not a celebration of NUH or a new era or transcendence or transformation, it's not a process of lifting us up from the regular world and do something different, like a portal that takes us from here to there, it can feel that way but all states are temporary really and whatever we experience throughout the medicinal journey is definitely a temporary thing, our mind usually plays tricks with us, and if you are targeting ourselves towards leaving this unhappy place, leaving this place of suffering, we sooner or later going to come back, that doesn't really create less suffering after all, so keeping in mind that all states are temporary really helps us to understand that whatever we work on is ourselves, so a good attitude would be to treat the medicinal process as an encounter with oneself and with others and with something larger than our own ego or persona, you might call it in all different ports, whatever you like, let's call it life with a capital L, let's call it healing, let's call it the mother of our existence, whatever you like, but the idea that we are just a part of a larger whole, we are interconnected, really helps us understand that to absorb this idea and connect to it, we need to learn how to encounter oneself and others, the other way would be to treat us and the meta event, we are considering that we are not really working on fixing stuff in our lives, be it illness, be it relationships, be circumstances, but rather we are revisiting rearranging the way we relate to our circumstances, to our life and to others, so we work on how we live our life, not on what are the circumstances for life, although as an entry point you of course start with observing the circumstances and learning what actually happens and trying to be homeless, so being homeless with oneself is very important, being honest and being vulnerable is really easy in the ceremonial context because in a sense, stripping off the usual patterns isn't that complicated considering that you open to yourself rather than opening to others and then connecting to the medicine and connecting to the field of healing allows oneself to open without being exposed to the same, so you're vulnerable and naked but you are not threatened in any way, where that one needs to develop trust towards the medicine and towards the journey and towards the facilitator and of course this is perhaps the most important prerequisite for any work of this kind, now it's very important to be prepared for a compassionate attitude towards others because as a group the healing work usually works better as it is a catalyst for compassionate attitude when catalyzing compassionate attitude is an intentional process, so for that we really need to keep ourselves open with regards to the existence of others and their peculiar situation which is as peculiar as our own peculiar situation, in that sense we are all human beings but sitting in the same ceremony we all share something, not a story but rather the intensity of work of inner work, and compassionate attitude is very important because then it translates into compassionate action and once it translates into to compassionate action it becomes part of this larger knowledge and discipline of connection that we have started with, most importantly perhaps is to agree that old patterns of our mind and whatever comes next might and will seize if we intend to, that although there are habits nothing is permanent and our humbuses are not permanent, if we have intention to work with that, habits and patterns going to cease and specifically this kind of medicine is very much about rewiring the patterns once we have intention to do so, it's really hard to rewire patterns without a particular intention and definitely not in the business we are in, in healing business we definitely point towards collaboration meaning that intention of the participant is what drives the intention and action of the facilitator and of the medicine as well. Now however having said that it's quite important to be prepared for the unexpected and our usual idea of what actually closes this suffering or death suffering might be very limited then unless we really dig deeper into that and coming to that with an open mind and understanding that okay I don't know much about my own situation otherwise I perhaps would be and would have been able to resolve it by myself without any support that really helps. A) it humbles us and our ego and which is never a bad idea and B) it makes ourselves a little bit more open a little bit that will teach us how to be more open and honest with ourselves once again. From this perspective perhaps the process of the ceremony can be described as ceremonial container and I allow this metaphor of ceremonial container even though it's a strange word container but then let's put it that way ceremonial container from a very practical perspective means that it has a beginning and has an end and in Tibet they have this word bardo and bardo means temporary or temporary process like there is a bardo of death and there is bardo of life and there is a bardo of process between life and death there is bardo of sleep. Now in our case ceremony is as well a particular container, a particular temporary existence and what it actually means is that it has a beginning and an end we really start with something, we've completed with something so we open it up and we complete it. It has a particular process inside that opens ourselves in a very particular manner creates a very different perception of our existence as compared to what we are used to having that particular property it resembles the cycle of life and death from the birth to the death and the process of rebirth as well and it not only symbolically shapes that way but as well practically once we are encountering a particular tough situation quite often it boils down to the existence that we have no simple rational explanation of primarily because saying our early childhood our mind wasn't really dealing with the existence in the same way if you are dealing with it in our adult life. So we didn't have much critical thinking or perception was different yet we might have had traumas of particular kind and most of the stuff psychoanalysts would deal with would be perhaps related to what happened in childhood or what happened what would happen in the least phase of our life. Now what the medicine specifically I am Vaska works with being facilitated properly is going into this at least consciously explored parts of our life of our existence and this really opens up as a cycle of life and death. So if you might experience symbolic rebirth and symbolic dying and it is very important for many reasons not everyone not every time but for some of us it's going to be a very eliminating experience very important and hardly replicable with other means. Most of all it's very safe and very safe experience too. Having this photographic relation to the life in death in general the property of ceremony is reverence. Ceremony is something set aside except apart from our regular life it's a particular predefined process in itself that's why we call it a sacred it's not profane not mundane it's sacred now in what sense in the sense of our relation to that if you revere and feel the importance of connection towards the driving force of the ceremony which is connection to the medicine itself then we are definitely in the ceremony. So if we see it and incubate and develop this relationship of being connected to the unseen not to the substance to the unseen to the to what is behind this substance to what is behind this process at least we are open towards that and we come with respect then we definitely shape the ceremony for us in particular and again this can be a little bit unusual for our contemporary mind but it is very important in the ceremonial context not only we are connected to the medicine we are as well getting connected to the tradition for traditions that have given birth of this line of work. Again traditions are important not because everything in the past is important it isn't it is not at the same time but tradition is a particular pattern and as a pattern of succession of continuation it has its own knowledge it has its own meaning in the way that it can teach us how to learn how to develop this continuation in our own lives and this allows us as well to build healthy relationships with our own past and again that's quite important in terms of understanding the roots of suffering and understanding how to even develop and more healthy the future towards our own life. Now once again the ceremonial container really calls for being open mind because we are encountering stuff that is unusual and that cannot be easily explained in our own rational interpretation to some extent our own rational interpretation might be exactly the cause for us to have issues for a moment we put it aside and not that we are forgetting our rational mind but we allow it to be at ease we allow it to be more flexible and more playful in the sense more curious instead of fixed patterns and dogmatic interpretations we better see it a playful and curious approach to what's happening and usually it really relaxes us way more than we would have expected and while relaxed we have less tensions and while relaxed we have more plasticity. As well physiologically in Europe plasticity is the result of us being relaxed in some way. This is only about ceremony now considering the preparation process. First of all the good thing to prepare oneself for is to encounter one's own state and we can start with that pretty much early on and we start with observation of our own state prior to the ceremony once we have decided that it is actually something of importance for us it's very important we start observing our own state, emotions, thoughts, patterns of our actions, mind states, whatever it is relationships. Well intention in that case is what we encounter is a evolutionary flow in a sense it's not our fixed idea of something but as rather what we need to work on in relation to our situation. So we observe our patterns and we look into that and we see that this actually becomes a point of contact with our intention what you want to do with that, what is our will behind our situation, what we need to work on. The important part is that we relate to our situation as a union of the actor and the situation itself. So we are looking into what we are doing, what we are thinking, how we relate to the world around us and inside of ourselves, not the circumstances themselves. In other words, usual intention would be to say okay I've got issues with my relationships okay so I wish to serve with my wife or my husband and I don't know what to do and perhaps I need to work with my husband like do something with that. Now a better intention here would be I'm looking to what I experience in relation to my marital situation, to my husband, to my wife. In that sense I'm looking into my own patterns of my own history, my own projections and I'm looking for help and support, rediscovering and more healthy approach towards all that. So you see we are sort of taking on responsibility for our own actions. Now while taking the responsibility we allow ourselves not to repeat the same situation over and over again, not to be the victim and that's very important to learn how not to be victim. The other component which is what I usually tend to specify more precisely is importance of preparatory deata of preparation. It's more than just food diet, although it definitely contains the nutrition. It's more like fasting in the religious context so we try to leave the plainest life possible. So plain dull, not spicy, meaning plain food, no spices, plain interface to the outside world, less intensity in relationship, less intensity in news and information flows. The reason for that is for us to learn how to listen because the less stimulus we bring into the equation, the more obvious it becomes what our reaction is. We sort of try to take ourselves out of the lunar part, out of the roller coaster for a while and just put us in front of the lake of our consciousness and stay there and observe what's happening. And this is very important because then starting to learn how to listen opens up the whole healing process. It's to some extent even more important than the sermon itself, but it is beginning of the ceremony. Then it starts with this very listening process. So we allow ourselves to start listening and this is what calls this plain life, why we need it. Now this process usually brings up all the source of anxieties and that's very important as well to understand that as the ceremonial preparation can bring up anxieties. Most of people who are coming for a journey like that would have anxieties and that's okay to be worried about stuff and to be worried and to have fear. Yet we need to look into that to understand what actually causes this fear. And then in some cases is just a self-regulation of the patterns we don't want anymore in our life. They bring up fears that oh look I'm going to be extinguished and I don't want to be extinguished as a pattern and this can create worry or oh look you don't know what going to happen next once you go into this process you perhaps want to return the same person or oh look it is so overwhelming perhaps it is dangerous for us. Now it's very important to look into all that and observe the emotional spectrum behind these anxieties and worries and observe that not only it creates something that sort of labeled as anxiety but it's well creates something of an opposite side of the same magnitude of oh and through reverence observe this oh and reverence towards the larger force of life is a capital L that is sort of knocking in your door so it's very important to understand that things going to float up to the surface during the preparation process and that's why exactly this is the reason why we draw off the usual commutation tools we normally use for a while. Whatever they are drugs, follicles, sex, whatever we do not compensate in the same manner while we are preparing for the ceremony and why because we wish to encounter what we are dealing with in its own pristine form and then as well practically at the commutation tools they have their own tool then they become something we need to clean and that's definitely not what you want to spend your time on. Finally it's very important to understand that it never works up to the expectations so whatever expectations you might have you better keep it very flexible and light and easy it's really hard to expect something we never encounter in our life so it's a very different thing it's just different it's easier and perhaps safer not to expect much as well not to expect a little but just calm open mind thinking that okay I've got my situation I have trust towards medicine trust towards facilitator I going to try it and we're going to see what it's really helping with it's very important to see this plan of respect and all to be able to open up in that manner of course make your checks check the facilitator try to understand what he or she's dealing with what state he or she is in what tools he or she deploys and why he or she is doing what they're doing make your checks your trust is your responsibility and you better make yourself prepared by going through your own checklist understand that it is a safe experience for you so with that I conclude and if you've got any questions perhaps the best time to ask me right now