"Liberation"
This will be one of the longest, most intense, and most vulnerable things I ever publicly share, and contains as much lightness as it does heaviness, but I have learned over these last 2 years of writing openly that more often than not someone needs it at the time and openly talking about things that are "taboo" in the medicine community helps others to feel less alone in the dark experiences they are afraid to talk to anyone about.
It describes what it is like living for over 30 years with a demonic entity as well as how I finally found liberation. Common responses to such processes in Western medicine communities is bypassing in the form of "it's all in your head", "those things aren't real", "it's just your own shadow and a way you are avoiding your work", "what's wrong with you, you're always processing and have a dark cloud around you, can't you just be happy and stop being so negative?". Sound familiar? I'm here to tell those of you navigating such energies that it's very real, you aren't crazy, you aren't alone, and you're likely doing a much better job than you think you are.
One of my primary intentions for my Dieta with Noya Rao and Rose was to gain Noya Rao's perspective on approaching dark energies in shamanic and plant work. I wrote a while back about feeling stuck between two paradigms when it comes to this. One of protection, cleansing, warding, banishing and essentially dualistic shamanic warfare and one of nonduality, love, unity, compassion and re-integration into the light. I asked to understand what ties me to this dualistic paradigm that is beginning to feel incompatible on a soul level as I continue my work with plant medicines, and this was revealed in my previous sharing:
(Noya Rao 2 Link)
Dark astral energies have been present in my reality since my earliest memories and well before any classical traumatic experiences. I've had many flashbacks of being in a crib as a baby, unable to speak and feeling/seeing a sinister presence within and surrounding me. It has manifested in countless ways and degrees of intensity throughout my life and has been very present in my plant medicine and dieta experiences since the beginning, thankfully never impacting a client, but only arising in spaces where someone held space for me or I was alone.
In an Ayahuasca ceremony by myself during this dieta, I encountered the familiar demonic energy stemming from my ancestral lineage in a very strong way, and as usual the physical manifestations that come with it like my body locking up in pain and tension, the sense of being watched and surrounded by a sinister presence, candles flickering and going out in the room, energies visibly chaotically flying about the space, the unsettling and deafening low frequency ringing noise, the air feeling thick and solid, dense and cold etc.
Normally my reaction when this arises is to sing in a way that pushes it away or trying to cleanse and purge it out of my body (as well as the approach of all of the shamans who have held space for me over the years), so I began doing so and nearly panicked as I felt it begin to wrap around my throat and prevent me from singing. Noya Rao told me in that moment "witness it arising, witness it transforming, trust me and don't be afraid". I took several deep breaths into the density surrounding me and a giant pillar of light and geometry began to form from the altar I had prepared, extending upward out the maloka roof, a visual representation of Noya Rao's spirit that simply said "observe". I began seeing imagery of Jesus in that moment being in the center of this pillar of light, and had many more experiences and communications with him throughout this dieta. I laid there in complete surrender and just witnessed the process of this energy effortlessly gathering from my body and flooding into to the pillar of light.
For so many years I hated this entity and the fact that I incarnated into a lineage containing it. I related to it as an inescapable plague in my family and a constant sabotaging, destructive and chaotic force underlying my psyche and life that I would always have to suffer with. After many dozens of plant medicine ceremonies (and over 2 years of daily non ceremonial life) falling into sheer terror at the way it manifested in my physical body --cancer, giant lumps spontaneously visibly appearing and moving around in my abdomen, excruciating pain that would leave me unable to move and hardly able to breathe...after seeking the assistance of countless plant spirits, indigenous shamans and healers over the course of over a decade, who all came from this same paradigm of dualistic shamanism, teaching me many ways of temporarily cleansing and extracting this energy from my body and surroundings, I realized this approach only fed and perpetuated it, creating a seemingly endless cycle of "banishing" and pushing it away only for it to continually replicate and reproduce itself like a virus, "coming back" worse each time it would temporarily seem to disappear.
I now see this entity as my greatest teacher and medicine. I found liberation not through everything I was taught by others, but through shifting my entire perspective and approach toward it through my own solo work with Rose and later Noya Rao. I began to see it not as this evil, terrorizing force, but as a being that felt completely distant and separated from God, so incredibly steeped in pain, fear and the feeling that it would never again be worthy of love, compassion, or the light that initially birthed it as a consciousness and individuation of source. For once I just allowed myself to feel the full extent of the pain of this entity as if it was my own inner child, while also observing from a place outside of it.
Suddenly the pain and chaos it had caused me since my childhood--the countless sleepless nights, horrifying nightmares, night terrors, sleep paralysis, waking visions, attracting witchcraft into my medicine path, all the instances where my physical body was in such intense pain I wanted to die to escape it, the many times contemplating suicide, all the hours of feeling such utter confusion, hopelessness, and like no one would ever be able to help me, all the ways it influenced my mind and interactions with others....none of it mattered anymore. All this dense emotion and trauma simply began being drawn to the same pillar of light as the hundreds of points this entity was attached to my body and energetic field.
I simply witnessed this happening from a place of pure compassion and forgiveness for all this entity had done, and all I had done and said while under its grasp, from a place of understanding of the profound teacher it has been in my life and overall soul path/mission. I wept for many hours as all of this released from my being and was left in awe that all it took was one single ceremony, finding the courage to do this on my own, and giving up the belief that only a proper maestro could help and that it was "beyond my ability". I had sat alone for this process many times, but always with the fear present, and always eventually desperately switching into "banishment mode". I can honestly say about a month later I don't feel any fear in my being and there is this profound sense of underlying calm and strong centering beneath whatever else may be on my mind or heart at the time that I've never had, replacing the ever present sense of "impending doom and chaos".
Not to my surprise, many have been reaching out since this experience processing similar energies, and I've since held remote dieta space for more than one person navigating an identical ancestral energy! My tendency in the past has been to tell these people I can't help or to try to refer them elsewhere, to avoid interacting with or holding space for such processes at all costs...and in a few cases over this last year I have held the space for it. I think I am finally beginning to accept that this path I have wanted to avoid at all costs of holding space for such things, IS what I am being called to, over and over because my entire life and healing process with the plants has been like one enormous initiation and teaching of just that. And the FEAR has finally subsided. If you read this far, thank you for witnessing me...writing about such things is as healing for me as it is for those it resonates with. And thank you, thank you, thank you to the pure light of Noya Rao and Rose
Pictures: my younger sister painted this spontaneously while my mother was here several years ago working with Ayahuasca under my care, where this generational entity also came up strongly and purged from her. My sister felt it happening on some level while 2000 miles away and it is a depiction of me as an angel/light being pulling the entity out of a sea of darkness. It's been a constant reminder all these years of what I had yet to fully understand. Second picture is the ceremony altar where the pillar of light formed.
Comments