Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - My Ayahuasca Trip to Peru - Part Two - Night One With Grandmother - Episode 125

Starting point is 00:00:00 Have you noticed that the world that we live in has been doing most of the thinking for you? That your beliefs, perceptions, reactions, fears, and doubts have been shaped by unsolicited outside noise? How easy it's been for you to slip into that default sleepwalking mode and label it as life and reality. Yeah, that ends here. Welcome to the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast. This is your opportunity to start thinking for yourself, reclaim control, and step back into that role as the shock caller and dominant force of your own reality. It's when you change the way that you look at things, that the things that you look at begin to change. So let's wake up,

Starting point is 00:00:41 let's rise up, and let's make sense of why and how shift happens. So in the next episode, I call it the deep breath before the plunge. And that is my actual Sacred Valley experience. From the moment I got there to debriefs after each interaction and sitting with the medicines. I tried a new medicine this time. I had never tried before. And I met a whole bunch of people that were from all over the world. And it was an extraordinary and very, very difficult at times experience. And I can't wait to share it with you.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Part two. The Deep Breath Before the Plunge. Here is my actual account of my Sacred Valley experience. The deep breath before the plunge. The flight before the fall. and the fear that comes before the truth. So this episode is about the journey that I took and how it began, the moment that I decided to go on this trip months ago with my friend.

Starting point is 00:01:42 And it also begins on the plane where fear starts to negotiate, doubt whispers at you, and identity starts to push back. I call it the deep breath before the plunge, because a lot happens before you actually go to the event and partake in the thing that you're afraid of. So in this deep breath, we confront this question, what am I dying to know? And then all of a sudden we're thrown in and we leap into this experience in Peru and into the arms of a group of strangers who all simultaneously somehow feel like it was fate that brought them there. René Descartes said this.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Where fear goes to die, truth begins to breathe. There's a moment that comes before every first ceremony. that's a moment that veterans of the plant medicine world know well and newcomers are totally freaked out about but they can kind of feel it in their bones. The sun kind of lowers behind the Andes Mountains, which are beautiful, by the way. And this is at the end of each day. And the air kind of starts to cool. Man, the weather out there is just super, super cool. It's just beautiful and sunny during the day. And in the mornings and at night, it's nice and cool, a little bit cold. But at that moment, the world kind of goes quiet. And something inside you,

Starting point is 00:02:55 says, there's no turning back now. And then you go sit in this thing called the Maloka, which is kind of like this private temple, where we do a lot of the exercises, including the plant medicine. And in that Maloka, we're sitting with these strangers who no longer feel like strangers at this point. This is getting ready for that first night. And what we're doing in there is we're listening to shamans prepare the space, which is an interesting part of the plant medicine experience. Along with their ancient rhythms and unseen protective measures, they're basically prepping this maloka, smudging different sense of smokes and mupacho. And we're just looking at these candles flickering as we're getting ready and we're in that deep breath before the plunge.

Starting point is 00:03:39 And as we're looking at those candles, knowing that they're going to be blown out and we're going to be in extreme darkness right after we drink the medicine, the air kind of starts to thicken. That's the best way I can explain it, and time itself begins to slow. And you hear your name called. And everything you thought you were ready for suddenly feels very, very real. And tonight, grandmother, the female entity that people use to refer to the medicine. This is a part that I don't expect anybody to understand if you've never done it. But in the plant medicine world, we refer to grandmother. And that is kind of who you go to meet when you're in the medicine. And I'm going to do my best to explain this stuff to all of you that have never done this before in a sense-making way. But tonight, grandmother is going to be answering my question

Starting point is 00:04:30 that I wrote to myself on the plane, and that would be called my intention that I was dying to know. Night one with ayahuasca has its own gravity. It's different. Night one is different than night two. Night two is different than night three. And in some cases, I've done four nights. No matter how many times that you sit with her, and that would be grandmother, no matter how much experience that you think that you have, whether you're a brand new to it or like myself, a seasoned veteran, she has this way of reminding you that familiarity is not control. She does not adjust to you. You adjust to her. So what I'm sharing with you now is the actual first night. So this account was taken the next day in the morning. Now, there's all different types of doses that you take.

Starting point is 00:05:16 meaning how much of the brew that you drink. And God, most people have heard stories or read about the taste of ayahuasca. God, how can I say this without being too graphic? I mean, it tastes like shit, but it's kind of like somewhere between like bark and licorice and shit, if you can just imagine. It's just an awful, awful tasting thing. But the amount that you take is a big, big thing to consider, right?

Starting point is 00:05:49 A brand new person is going to take kind of like an opening, just exploratory small dose just to feel what it's like. If you take too much, you could be in really big trouble. So I myself, it had been about a year and a half since I've drinking the medicine, I took what I would call a respectful medium dose, meaning not too small, not too big. And something that I wasn't too worried about. I thought maybe I'd have some control over. Now, the reason why I did that, because I've taken much, much bigger doses in the past,

Starting point is 00:06:17 is that I knew that I would have an opportunity for a second, even a third dose. So I didn't want to rush into things. But also the word on the street from people that had been there the week before, as well as some of the facilitators that were helping us. And the facilitators there at Arcana are just amazing. Shout out to them. But the word on the street was that this particular brew was extremely powerful. So I decided to go in with like a medium dose.

Starting point is 00:06:42 Now, newcomers often drink and wait because they've never experienced it. I mean, just think about it right now. If you've never sat with plant medicine, you're wondering, what's it like? What does it feel like? Is it like anything that I've ever had before? So newcomers drink and they kind of wait and they're going through a lot of analytical thinking and questioning and doubting, wondering if it's ever going to happen. And I've got tons of funny stories.

Starting point is 00:07:07 I'm going to write a book about this. One story that comes to mind was the first time that I ever. ever drank ayahuasca. And then I'll get back to this particular time. I was in the jungle, Amazon Jungle of Peru, and I drank a big dose, because that's just the way it was presented to me. And I was sitting on my mattress. Everybody sits on mattresses. And you're either in a circle facing in the middle, or you're in this case, kind of like in an alleyway type of a Moloka, where we're kind of lined up on two sides of this kind of hallway looking building. But in the Amazon, I was in that circle and I was about two, two and a half hours in and I could hear, because you can't

Starting point is 00:07:46 see anything. It's completely dark. I could hear people vomiting and purging. We'll talk a little bit about purging at some point, but nothing. I felt nothing. I mean, I literally just resolved that it wasn't going to work for me. So frustrated and kind of confused, you know, I had never tried it before, so I didn't even know what to think about it.

Starting point is 00:08:06 I caught myself trying to think that it was happening like, hey, I think I just saw something weird or did I hear something? Because I'd heard all these extraordinary stories that people see these beautiful fractals and spaceships and just crazy lights and messages and cheetahs and anacondas and hummingbirds and frogs and all that stuff. But if I'm being honest, nothing was happening. So in that moment, one of the shamans and the shamans are these like ancient aliens that like live and do this work full time. They actually live in the jungle. I mean, Arcana has the most authentic shamans ever. So one of the shamans came over and sat on my mattress and began to talk to me, which I thought was really, really sweet. But the conversation that we have was just mind-blowing.

Starting point is 00:08:52 I mean, insights that I was getting from this guy were just unbelievable, and he knew so much about me. It was almost like he knew how to do my astrological reading or something like that. He knew so much about me, and we're having this whole conversation. And I would say that conversation was going on for about an hour. Now, it wasn't until about an hour into this conversation, and I really appreciated the conversation because I couldn't feel the medicine, right? Everybody else sounded like they were involved in something. But here I am just having this totally normal conversation. And it wasn't until about an hour into this conversation that I realized that the shamans don't speak English. That was the first thing that I understood. I said, wait a second, this guy doesn't speak English.

Starting point is 00:09:32 How am I understanding what he's saying? And then that kind of elevated. my clarity to the second level where I said, wait a second, this guy that I'm talking to is like only a foot tall. And I just realized in that moment that I must be in the medicine because I was talking to an imaginary, or at least in that moment I thought it was imaginary because I mean, how could somebody that doesn't speak English, speak English and also be a foot tall? And in that moment, he just evaporated into a puff of smoke. Then I knew that I was in the medicine. So that's how peculiar it could be. And part of the funny story is that I screamed at that point, as I think anybody else would be justified to do. I said, what the fuck? This was my first experience.

Starting point is 00:10:14 And everybody was saying, shh, stop it, J.C. And I was like, if you knew what I just experienced. So night one here, I took that medium dose, right? Because I heard that it was, it was strong. Now, you can imagine from that first story, ayahuasca kind of arrives like some form of intelligence, kind of like some ancient living force that kind of knows its ways around the architecture of your fears and illusions. That's what's really weird about the medicine, is that it's in you and it's working with your brain and your sense-making machine. So it kind of knows you. You know, the medicine's inside of you and your experience is going to be like this partnership between it and you. Now, I know that the untrained, you know, unexperienced mind

Starting point is 00:10:57 is going to look at this as like taking some sort of drug and hallucinating. It's not like, that and I'm not going to stand up for it and try to justify or protect it, but it's just different than anything you've ever experienced. But for me, I think it's because I was returning. I first felt her presence within 15 minutes that first night. Now, normally about a half hour or 45 minutes in, the shamans start to chant, which indicates that they're feeling the medicine. And it's interesting because the shamans in the old days, before people like us started to use the medicine, it wasn't like that. They would take the medicine and they would do healing while they were in the medicine themselves on others. So now we're doing the medicine with them. So usually about 30, 45 minutes and the

Starting point is 00:11:41 shamans start to chant, which indicates they're feeling it because they're drinking it as well, as they always have. But for me, it just happened fast. I felt her presence right away. And the way that I first know that the medicine is taking place is I kind of feel like my body in extremities start to get heavy. And I'll talk more about that because I get to an extreme point of that. It's kind of like gravity changes. I'm kind of just like sinking into my bed and it's very, very laboring to pick up my body. So that's the first thing I noticed and it happened like 15 minutes in. So the first hallucinations and visions started to show up and these fractile shapes appeared. You know, the swirling geometry that people talk about, the impossible shapes and spaceships and things like that,

Starting point is 00:12:29 blistering into new images, you know, stacking one upon another. It's either extraordinary or overwhelming to see that. And then what happens is corridors of shifting color and light come through. But basically, if you know something about plant medicine, when that stuff starts to happen, it's kind of like time to greet her and say, hey. And I was kind of a seasoned veteran. I was thinking I was feeling a little bit confident, maybe even cocky, which is a characteristic that I'm kind of happy to get rid of, but it showed up again.

Starting point is 00:12:59 and I kind of greeted her like she was my old friend. Now, in that moment, I forgot that that's not a good idea, typically. But I was kind of like, hey, grandma. And I think I did this out of fear. But I was like, hey, it's me. I'm back. Remember me? Looking for some sort of a high five.

Starting point is 00:13:16 Well, I say now that she didn't appreciate that casual tone. And I keep referring to her as she because that's the way we talk about it. But it wasn't like this woman standing there. It was just a female presence in an entity. that universally we call grandmother, but you can tell she likes or doesn't like something by the energy. She didn't like that casual tone. So my confidence and my comfortable greeting to her, I think she probably recognized that I had forgotten. I had this lack of acknowledging and respecting her powers. And it's true. You know, I knew from prior experiences, but it's been a while.

Starting point is 00:13:53 It's been about a year and a half. And I think kind of behind it was fear that I was kind of like in a frightened way, hoping that she would recognize me and be my friend. But what I should have done when she showed up is I kind of should have knelt down before her and kind of bowed with respect. Now, once again, anybody that's done, ayahuasca would probably fully understand. But for somebody that hasn't, just imagine a force that is just so powerful, godlike, and you disrespect it by not honoring it. It's kind of like that. You know, I should have knelt down and bowed before her with respect. But, No, I was kind of looking for a friendly hug or some sort of high five at a chest bump from an old friend. So not a good idea.

Starting point is 00:14:36 And I would say that she responded with some sort of a cosmic slap of humility. Isn't that an interesting way of looking at it? It was like this message that said, hey, Mr. Confident. Hey, Mr. Confident Dragon Guy. So you're all in, huh? He came out to Peru and you're in the Sacred Valley. You're going to do little plant medicine and you're excited to see Grandma, excited and ready for some sort of a breakthrough, like this is some sort of a seminar? Well, maybe you'd like to

Starting point is 00:15:04 try this then. And I remember that I was kind of getting worried because there's always this pending fear that you're going to have a rough time because you can have a wonderful time. You can have a blissful, wonderful time, but sometimes you can have a very dark time. So if you're doing plant medicine for the first time or even as a seasoned vet, you kind of know that, you've heard about it. So you get a little bit worried when you start to feel the energy shift. but she was kind of like, hey, maybe you'd like to try this. And remember, I'm in the medicine now. And all of a sudden, the energy kind of refers to this big, massive black hole that

Starting point is 00:15:40 opened up at her feet. Now, for somebody that's never done medicine, you're just going to have to stretch your imagination a little bit here. I'm just trying to give you an account of what it looked like to me. Nobody else saw this. But this massive black hole opened up at her feet, it was kind of like this infinite void that was like pulling everything light matter and time into it, kind of like a black hole. And her message was clear.

Starting point is 00:16:05 Jump in, Mr. Confident Dragon. If you're so confident and you're all in, why don't you jump into this? Well, I jumped in. Now, what you're told when you're doing plant medicine is that if you are offered some sort of a dark situation, it's something necessary and it's needed. And you should try your best to just go with it because that's where the lesson is. Now, typically, when somebody experiences that offer to go to a dark place, their common sense and their human analytical program mind would say, no fucking way, I'm getting out of here. And you can do that.

Starting point is 00:16:40 You can say I'm not going. But because I knew when I knew, even though I was frightened of this, I jumped. And I jumped recklessly. Because I wanted to grow, but also in a disrespectful way, in the sense that I didn't even think about it. So this could have been a good thing. thing or a bad thing. But I kind of jumped in like some sort of foolish frat boy, like doing like a cannonball into a pool to show off in front of the girls. Instantly, I mean instantly, after I kind of went with it, she kind of turned my blood into lead. So I explained a little bit before about that gravitational heaviness of my body. Well, now it was as if all the blood in my body turned into lead. And I was like laying on this mattress and I could barely even lift my arms. And that's kind of when I

Starting point is 00:17:26 knew that things were not going to be easy. So I kind of sank into my mattress, completely immobilized. When I say the room is dark, you cannot tell the difference between you're having your eyes closed and eyes opened. You cannot see your hand one inch in front of your face. That's how dark this room is. So I kind of sank into my mattress and the symphony of surrounding people vomiting into their buckets. There's this purging concept. There's all these different types of purging. I traditionally don't purge vomit-wise, but it's going to come out of somewhere. I could hear all these things going on, but I was helpless. I was helpless. I couldn't do anything. So she kind of pinned me down with this unmistakable message. She said, sit down, shut the fuck up, and pay attention to me. You're not

Starting point is 00:18:15 leading this one dragon. Then I know I was fucked. The way I can explain it is she started to show me things. What it was is she kind of showed me this war. Now, once again, for the people that I've never experienced this before, you're hearing my account. This doesn't mean anything in the realm of what you're going to experience. I'm sharing, just unfiltered, fully transparent, what I perceived. Understand that this is not going to happen for anybody else. This was my experience. Yours will be yours. It could be wonderful. It could be difficult. But either way, it's always coming with a beautiful, beautiful message and lessing. Either way, why would I keep going back? there's obviously value. So she showed me what I call the war. So I found myself traveling through space

Starting point is 00:19:02 all of a sudden. Remember, I'm pinned to the mattress, but now I'm in this other realm and I'm traveling through space, literally, right? This visceral space. There's battleships kind of hurling beams of light across the void. I mean, Battlestar Galactica stuff, right? I'm in space and there's just this huge war going on of these kind of Star Wars-like with explosions, you know, blooming all over the place. And what was interesting is I couldn't hear anything. I could just see it, but there was no like explosive sounds or anything. So they were blooming and booming silently. It was chaotic, but at the same time, in a weird way, beautiful and terrifying, all at the

Starting point is 00:19:41 same time. And I knew, without explanation, without any level of doubt, my side was losing. That was the theme is I was losing. So this wasn't like some sort of cosmic battle, by the way. It was obvious that it was my. own internal war. I went there with a very specific intention, and it was to get rid of a couple of fears. I remember one of my intentions was I wanted to be fearless, but also I said worryless and calm. So I went there looking for help from grandmother, because you have an intention. You're going there

Starting point is 00:20:15 for a reason. You don't just go there to experience it. That would be a bad idea because you would get nothing out of it. So I had these specific fears. One of the fears was of losing everything. And what I mean by that is fear of failing, my fear of full collapse of my whole life, my fear of not being able to protect my kids, specifically my daughter from all of the monsters. That's what I kind of always felt like my role is as a dad. My fear of financial ruin, like I'm starting to do much better in life after these five years of tough times, hard knocks. But each one of these fears manifested in this kind of depiction of this battle, in this battlefield. Now, how did I know that? I can't explain that, but you just know it.

Starting point is 00:20:58 If you're just watching the show and you're not asking questions and you're not reminding yourself of why you're there, you'll just have these visuals and you won't even know why. But whatever I see something, I kind of ask questions. What does this mean? What does this mean? So it was obvious to me that this was all of my fears manifesting as kind of a force in this battlefield. So this went on for an hour or so. You know, and I wasn't really struggling at this point, but I knew that my side was loo.

Starting point is 00:21:26 that was the storyline that was unfolded. And then in the middle of all of that chaos, all of these little white lights started to appear. And I'm talking, this is not not happening. This is happening, as far as I'm concerned, kind of like the little guy on my mattress. So these soft white lights started to appear. And they kind of streamed in like reinforcements. That's the way I felt like, okay, here comes the reinforcements. Anytime white light shows up, it's kind of like my backup. and it always represents my wife, the chicken. My backup was here, and it was her. So that's another interesting thing about these experiences is if you don't know this.

Starting point is 00:22:06 For me, I always know this. Whenever I'm in trouble, something at some point after an hour in this case comes to save you. And it's typically my wife. Now, not in her physical form. I can't see her, but her essence. Sometimes she shows up as a flower in sad times and things like that. She appeared for me in many, many ceremonies before, but she always appears as a white light. And sometimes it represents my daughter as well.

Starting point is 00:22:31 So for anybody that, once again, that has sat with medicine, they kind of know about this type thing. But even in the darkest times, something always comes to pick you up. It's never forever. But it's always about strength and support. I've come to learn that this support is there to remind me. And here's one of the lessons. You know, everything happens for a reason in plant medicine.

Starting point is 00:22:55 But it's there to remind me that I'm not alone. I'm never alone. In fact, I'm in this room with all these amazing people and we all love and support each other. But I have a soulmate. And that comes from a place of gratitude. A lot of partners are probably worried that if their partner goes and does plant medicine, they're going to come back. And maybe that does happen sometimes and get rid of that person.

Starting point is 00:23:16 But for me, my soulmate is there better or for worse, both ways. So it's a beautiful moment when that happens. So with her presence, kind of the battle that was going on shifted slightly. So darkness kind of showed signs of receding. Now, it wasn't like we were dominating, but the tide began to turn. And that's always an uplifting part of it. It's beautiful. And just as things started to go my way, that's what's interesting is sometimes you feel like you're reclaiming control.

Starting point is 00:23:48 And that's always a mistake. Remember how this whole thing with the black hole started is I thought I was in control. I had confidence, borderline cockiness, right? As soon as I thought that things were going my way, she pulled me out of that situation instantaneously and then dropped me into this next realm, where I had to kind of begin again. And this reminded me again of who controlled the situation. Remember, she said, sit down, shut the fuck up. You're not controlling this one. As soon as I thought I was controlling and winning, she removed me. She's the game master. You know, and that reminds me of the hunger games. You know, there's the game master that can change the game at any time as soon as they

Starting point is 00:24:25 think that they're fine or they found a hiding spot. A wave of nausea rose through my body at this point. And it was interesting because at some point, and this is one of the special things about this Arcana Spiritual Center, they have, the shamans are doing these things called Ikeros, and they're chanting. And it's beautiful, but also a little bit intense because they're not like chanting at you, they're protecting the space. So if you can imagine when they're doing some sort of a protective chant, it's almost like a battle, but at some point in the night, and usually this is like a four to six to eight hour night, the facilitators, and these are these just amazing people, this particular one, Maddie girl, who just has this beautiful guitar. She plays and she's got this

Starting point is 00:25:10 angelic voice. So here she comes and she starts playing her guitar, which is a beautiful sound, her beautiful chords, and she has this beautiful angelic voice. And here I am getting cracked open. And boom, I had to throw up. Like one second, I was fine, coming out of the war, going into this next realm, the guitar comes on, and boom, I have no choice. I have to violently, unavoidably purge. So everybody's got a bucket next to them. And just imagine you're sitting like one foot, two feet away from your partner. And you're not just throwing up. You're violently throwing up. And I will say that was the first time that I ever threw up at a ceremony before. Because remember, there's different ways of purging. You can throw up, you can vomit. It could come out the

Starting point is 00:25:55 other side. They say, never trust an ayahuasca fart. That's kind of a joke. But it could also come as a yawn. And that's what it is for me. I can have these deep yawns. You could sweat, you could cry. But either way, there's different ways of purging. And as soon as I heard her beautiful voice, boom. What's interesting about the purging is it's very, very uncomfortable. It's not fun at all. But in this case, it kind of emptied something evil out of me. It's like I felt like I removed something and it felt so good on the other side of it. Right now I'm thinking, what the hell are you doing explaining this to people?

Starting point is 00:26:28 They're all going to think you're nuts. But I think it's important. The reason why I'm doing it, I'm sure it's entertaining. But I know that a lot of people wonder what it is and a lot of people have no idea what it is. And as you'll soon see, there's a big, big lesson behind all of this stuff. This is by no means fun. I remember the first time I met somebody that had done ayahuasca and I asked him what it was like.

Starting point is 00:26:51 And he says, well, it ain't no fucking vacation. This is hard work, my friends. So purging in any ayahuasca ceremony, it's not some sort of just physical release. It's the medicine's way of clearing emotional, energetic, and psychological blockages that the body has been holding onto, sometimes for years. What feels like vomiting, going to the bathroom, crying, shaking, sweating, or yawning in my case most of the time is actually the somatic expression of you letting go, creating space for something like clarity, healing, and a deeper insight that needs to arise. Remember, we're not bringing something outside in. We're remembering something

Starting point is 00:27:33 on the inside that we have forgotten. So purging kind of unveils that sometimes. So when my purge was over, clarity kind of surged in. I felt wonderful after it. And it was perfect timing because here's Maddie with her music. And now it's kind of guiding me through my journey. It's kind of becoming like a guide. It was wonderful.

Starting point is 00:27:55 She's got this beautiful voice, but it's pulling me into this next realm and it's guiding me. So it felt kind of like my initiation and punishment for that lack of respect kind of had passed. She kind of reminded me of how powerful she was. She beat me up a little bit. But now she plunged me into this underwater realm. And it wasn't kind of like this normal ocean kind of a thing.

Starting point is 00:28:17 It was something like mythical, like the underground world of Atlantis. It had glowing plants and they were swaying in slow motion with the current strange, unfamiliar creatures that probably don't exist in the real world. You know, kind of drifted past me. tunnel-like corridors opened up in the deep. It was just this amazing kind of Star Wars, Jar Jar Banks kind of a thing. And just as the ocean floor became more and more shallow, like I was kind of coming to the edge where the water turns into land. And I kind of arrived at the shoreline where you'd get out of the water, walk on the land. I found that the shoreline, like the land,

Starting point is 00:28:57 was melting. I know this sounds extraordinary, but that's just the way it looked. It looked like it was melting. The land was dissolving kind of grain by grain, but it was melting like wax melts, and it was melting into nothingness. It wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't like lava or something. It was melting away. So I knew instantly, and once again, I can't explain how I knew this, but that probably comes with practice. You know, there's always a meaning, but it was a funeral. A funeral was taken place, and we'll refer to this as the first funeral, because there were two. I kind of recognized at that point that it represented my daughter. daughter. The land represented my daughter. And how did I know that? Well, she's my foundation. She's my rock. She's my

Starting point is 00:29:37 world. So the funeral was being held around the fear that I have for my daughter. And that fear is that she's going to leave me and that she was going to be harmed and misled and ruined by boys and other people and evil doers and all of that stuff. Because remember, my role as a dad is to protect her, to give her unconditional love. But that fear is not playing out well in my life because I'm always worried and that's not a good state to be in. But this idea and this need that I have to micromanage her life to keep her safe or else, the medicine kind of gently gestured something to me. Let your fear go, J.C. She's safe. She's strong. You're doing a great job. She is meant to walk her own path. And it's just such an interesting thing in that moment. The reason why I think that dads hold on so much is because

Starting point is 00:30:32 there's an interesting paradox where we're raising our kids to not need us. And it's really tough for a dad to do that with the love of his life, his daughter. So it was a funeral. So I kind of cried a little bit. You know, I'm wiping tears from my eyes, you know, as this shore vanished. But it was at the same time a sign that something that no longer applied was going away. So that's why I called it a funeral. So that's what part of the ego death thing is like is you'll very often get this obvious impression that something is moving on, but it was done in a very delightful way that says she's going to be fine. You're doing a great job. Then all of a sudden, as soon as I made that distinction, then came the next realm. I was taken right out of that and I was plunged into a

Starting point is 00:31:21 city. Tall skyscrapers and the cityscape and city life. And New York. or wherever. And it was like a vast cityscape appeared below me, representing, I think, my entire adult life and my work and my ambition and the money. Here's the other fear and the pressure to provide for my family, which always keeps me up at night. The fear of financial instability, the fear of failing my family in this idea that I have to take care of everything. And in the middle of that city stood this enormous, powerful financial district-like skyscraper, towering above all of the other buildings. This represented my money fear, my survival fear, my role as a father, my, it could all collapse at one's fear. And that's a big one for me. And then as I looked up at the skyscraper,

Starting point is 00:32:12 and I know this sounds crazy, but I was kind of elevated and I'm looking at the top of the skyscraper. And it kind of looked a little Empire State building-ish. All of a sudden, just like the land in the water, the skyscraper began to melt. So I recognized at that point I'm at another funeral. This is funeral too. It was melting slowly, but obviously. And then it started to rapidly melt, kind of like candle wax. But here's the weird thing. I'm sharing this completely transparently. And most of it doesn't make sense, but I would assume it's somewhat entertaining. As it melted away, it kind of turned into what looked like strawberry shortcake. Now, my neighbor to the left, and I won't say her name, She's laughing because, and that's her nickname now, I call her Strawberry Shortcake.

Starting point is 00:32:54 But at that time, she heard me say Strawberry Shortcake. She asked me later, what, what did it mean? And I was telling her this. The building was melting away. It was looking like melting Strawberry Shortcake, as if grandmother had some sort of a sense of humor. So at this point, I've got the music playing. I'm having these wonderful distinctions.

Starting point is 00:33:13 I had the first funeral and I feel like this weight is left it off my shoulder. I don't have to worry about my daughter. And by the way, logically, I know that I don't have to worry about things that I don't control as long as I'm doing my best. But it's different when something so powerful tells you everything's going to be fine. So I yelled out strawberry shortcake and, you know, and she to the left of me laughed. But, you know, ayahuasca almost laughed at me as well, grandmother kind of in a warmly, almost lovingly way. But the message was clear. See, your fears are softer than you think.

Starting point is 00:33:48 meaning not as powerful as you think, unless you're telling yourself. They dissolve the moment that you stop feeding them. And I made that distinction that I was creating those fears. They weren't actually happening. I was playing a massive role in both of those fears in creating them. So that was the second funeral. So these are massive distinctions. And this is what I came there for.

Starting point is 00:34:11 I almost think like, oh my God, I don't need to ever drink ayahuasca again. So the funeral of scarcity, the funeral of collapse. The funeral, meaning dying off of believing my worth was tied to stability. If I don't protect and provide and keep a stable life from my family, then I'm nothing. So that's all going away. At the end, she showed me the final truth. And what I realized is that as humans, we're not here to worry about stuff. What we're really here to do is love.

Starting point is 00:34:42 Everything else is noise. Think about that for a second. Humans are here to embrace in, enjoy, and shed and share love. Everything else is just noise. The signal that sits outside of the noise is love. And when the lights came on later in that night and people started to kind of empty out, I was humble. I just felt like raw and humbled.

Starting point is 00:35:07 I would say overall, even though I got my butt kicked in the beginning, I had a wonderful first night experience. And I felt just free in a way that I hadn't expected. I had no idea that that was going to happen. But those two funerals, which I didn't think were going to happen so fast, they happened right away. You know, the one for my daughter, the one for the money. But what I didn't know is that I had not finished healing yet.

Starting point is 00:35:32 Something inside me had shifted permanently and profoundly. And I had gotten all of the answers to my intentions and everything. I said, oh, my God, this is amazing. It all happened. I realized that I wasn't finished healing. And I kind of knew that in the back of my mind. As I said to myself, I'm never doing that again or I never knew to do that again. So that was my, believe it or not, first night of sitting with the medicine.

Starting point is 00:35:58 And here I am feeling wonderful. And at the end of the night, we get to eat fruit and we kind of hang out and we chat and we tell war stories and everything. That's one of the glorious parts of it is that it ends. You know, it's over and you feel great. You go to sleep. and then there's this whole other day coming ahead of you. But I just remember thinking to myself that I'm never going to drink ayahuasca again,

Starting point is 00:36:19 which typically you always say that when you're in it, no matter what night. But I said, I'm never going to do this again, but I knew intuitively that I wasn't finished. So till we meet again on night two, the next ceremony, which was the next night, that is my first experience in the Sacred Valley at this amazing retreat. So until the next time. That's it for today. To support the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. podcast, be sure to subscribe, like, and share, as well as follow the Make Sense substack for free daily quotes, live streams, and blogs.

Starting point is 00:36:53 And remember, learning without action is just another form of distraction. If something hit home and you learn something today, give it away. That's the only way it's going to stay. See you next time. Makes sense.

Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - My Ayahuasca Trip to Peru - Part Two - Night One With Grandmother - Episode 125

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