When we were children, my brothers and their friends bought hashish to smoke some joints. I saw how they behaved after smoking it and I thought one becomes silly, so I only rolled the joints up. Of course, being in the same room I was a passive smoker, but I didn't know it at the time.
Many years later, life led me through other paths (which I chose) and I ended up going to #Mexico to contact shamans.
I lived in Mexico about 8 years before, but at that time I was a volunteer on a Catholic mission, and thinking about shamanism was not still part of my life.
I contacted several shamans in Mexico and Guatemala with whom I learned and shared what I had learned on my trips to India and Nepal. And being with those shamans, someone told me about a woman they called the Shaman of the Mushrooms, Maria Sabina. I was told she was doing special treatments to cure people using mushrooms. She had already died but her grandson had learned from her and followed her tradition.
I decided to go see what I could learn from it.
With the word "grandson" I expected to find someone young, but there everyone has children from a young age and this man was already over 50 years old. They say that Maria died at the age of 91, but her family says she was over 100 years old.
Her grandson told me that to heal, he goes into a trance and goes to the "other dimension" to meet the soul of the person who has taken the mushroom and there he does the healing. I took the mushroom, went into a trance and it was a deep meditation ... that was it. Of course, I had nothing physical to cure, but anyway I "didn't see him" in the dimension I was in.
That day I took the mushroom, there were two other young women who had taken mushrooms before. During the ceremony one thought he was a tiger and spent two hours grunting. The other faced a personal problem and spent two hours crying. When I left the trance (because the shaman said to end), a man who was watching there as an observer was glad that I moved and said that he thought I could have died because I did not move even half a second in all that time. He said he had observed many mushroom rituals, but he never saw anyone not moving.
The #meditation, as meditation, was fine. But as a ritual, I didn't think it was special.
Time passed, many more years and many more experiences in my life, and the time came when I decided to give myself a second chance with the magic fungi. I returned to the Sierra Mazateca but this time I wanted to do it with someone different, with another grandmother. When I arrived at that grandmother's house, it turned out that she was sick with cancer and they had just taken her to Mexico City, where she was admitted to a hospital (she died a couple of months later).
One of her daughters, in her thirties, offered to do a ritual with me. She had helped her mother since she was a child and when her mother was not there, it was she who did the rituals.
So, I did that ritual, very different from what Maria Sabina's grandson does. She sang spiritual songs, had a large altar and was always there. That night, after taking the mushrooms, all I saw were psychedelic colours ... "Puff" I thought "for this?". That was not the reason why I would take mushrooms, or Holy Children, as they are called them there.
The next day I went to the sacred hill where rituals are done and it is a place with a very special energy. On the way, there was Maria Sabina's house. I went to say hello and his grandson invited me to do a ritual with him (paying, of course). I stayed that night (all these ceremonies are always done when the sun goes down).
When I did the ritual with him about 17 years before, at least on that occasion he was with us all the time, but this time he gave me the mushrooms, and after doing a "cleansing" on me with leaves and incense, he left. No more prayers, nothing. He showed up again a couple of hours later, when I had already returned from the trance and was preparing to go to the cot.
(This is the link where I published part of this experience with the shamans. Only the first part of the video, about 9 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfTLchonU58
That night I saw again the colours and psychedelic shapes. But suddenly a jaguar came by, who stood friendly by my side and other animals followed, including an elephant, and there are no elephants in Mexico, but that must be because of my connection with India.
When the next day I went down to the town of Huautla de Jiménez with the shaman and told her of my vision, she told me that this meant that the jaguar, the sacred animal par excellence for the #shamans of the Latin American jungle, had given me the signal that they had opened the door to enter the other dimension. And she recommended me to do another ceremony.
So we did another ritual, but this time I did not go into a trance. I had "swallowed" all the mushrooms she had and there was no more. She told me she had some dry Holy Children in a room and that she would give me those, to see if there is luck. And there was.
After taking just one of those mushrooms I went into a trance quickly. A spiritual guide came and asked me what I wanted to know. I told him, he answered me, and he "installed a device" in my body to help me when I want to work on that issue. Then he disappeared and I, glad to have managed to get an answer to my question, tried to get up. But at that moment the shaman began to sing another spiritual song. Those are Catholic songs that, of course and being Spanish, I knew perfectly well. So mentally I started singing together with her, but only a few seconds because then I went into a trance again.
Now it came another different guide who asked me what else I wanted to know. I asked her, she answered me and "placed another instrument" in my body so that every time I have that kind of question I can use it and find the answer for myself, and she left. Now even happier because I got the answer to two of my doubts, I tried to get up again.
The shaman began to sing another song. I mentally followed that song for a few seconds ... and fell back into a trance. Another guide came. Another question. Another answer and the placement of another instrument in my body ... and so like that it was repeated during the two hours in which the ceremony lasted until the #shaman decided that it had to end because it was too late already, since the first hour it was just trying to get the Children to take effect, and then, seeing that I was in a trance, she let me spend another two hours.
She told me that she had done a lot of #ceremonies, and she could verify that I have control over my energy and what happens to me, despite everything, because it is normal for people to have some physical reaction such as crying, jumping, screaming, gesturing, even vomiting in some cases. And I was there still and quiet all the time.
I have to say, I finally loved it. Unfortunately, I didn't write anything down and eventually I forgot what they told me and the instruments they placed in my body. I only remember one of them because I was very funny:
I asked him what I could do to improve my #clairvoyance, to see beyond what is seen with the naked eye and beyond time. He gave me instructions, and then he put me a spyglass (that long-distance optical instrument that consists of a tube, usually extensible, with a lens at each end, which was used especially on ships to observe the sea and see if someone was coming) in my third eye. He placed it in me and explained how to use it, but the idea was so funny that I'm not sure I paid much attention to the details.
To keep in mind, that I firmly believe in non-duality, that is, that we are not separated from each other, and we are all, on the ultimate level, only one. And therefore, when talking about the spiritual guides that were presented to me, they were in reality myself in different aspects, depending on the question I was going to ask. And since my inner Higher Self, full of wisdom, knew what I was going to ask (although my consciousness didn't know it yet), the "spiritual guide" that appeared to me on each occasion, was "casually" an expert in the issue we were going to discuss and came dressed and with the right instrument I was going to need for that question.
Two years later, I will now try the Ayahuasca in Peru. I do not want to create high expectations but I will be open to what happens and if nothing happens, it will be because it will have to be like that for me. But this time I will write what I remember about what happens to me during the ceremony to make sure that I will not forget. Of course, since I have no experience in the subject, maybe I will be too stunned to write anything, but we'll see what happens.
Because this experience I had with mushrooms was wonderful and very significant ... but if I forget what happened, there is no use of it.
